Philosopher's Stone-Lethal White connections, Part 3: The adventure begins with nightmares, open-sky ceilings and lots of corridors.

This section picks up with Chapter 6 of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, "The Journey from Platform 9 3/4," and Chapter 12 in Lethal White. In the last installment of this series, I reviewed the similarities between Harry's trip to Diagon Alley and Strike's visit to Pratt's. What struck me in this section is how similar Harry's first view of Hogwarts is to Robin's first visit to the House of Commons.

It starts with a bit of domestic tension for both our protagonists. The Dursleys, of course, are furious that Harry is going to Hogwarts; Matthew is equally angry that Robin is going undercover in Parliament, considering it tantamount to treason. Both Harry and Robin wind up isolating themselves in their bedrooms as they prepare, Robin by practicing her disguise and reviewing Chiswell family trivia with Strike, and Harry by perusing his books. Both approach the big day with a combination of excitement and nerves. Robin has two panic attacks on her first day; Harry also gets a little panicky, first when he can't find Platform 9 3/4; second when he is thinking he would have to do magic for the Sorting. And, just as Robin awoke with a nightmare on her first day at Parliament, Harry awoke with a nightmare on his first night at Hogwarts. 

Philosopher's Stone-Lethal White connections, Part 2: Moving forward, looking back and why Sam Barclay is Hedwig.

One challenge in working through Harry Potter and the Philosopher's  (or Sorcerer's) Stone and Lethal White for start-of-ring connections is trying to figure out where to divide the book sections.  For the first post, it was logical to do the opening chapters, but that 1-to-1 obviously cannot continue, given how much longer LW is than PS. Just taking a guess, I'm going to next look through the part of the story that occurs after the time-jump, but before the major adventure (Hogwarts/Robin's undercover mission) begins. For Harry, this is Chapters 2-5: the zoo trip with the vanishing glass, the letters from no one, the Dursley's flight to the Hut-on-the Rock, Hagrid's rescue of Harry on his 11th birthday and the subsequent trip to Diagon Alley to prepare him for Hogwarts. For Strike and Robin, this is Chapters 1-11: beginning  with Strike's hiring of Barclay and going through Billy's arrival at the office, Robin's ending of her therapy and move to the new house, Strike's visit to the CORE meeting, Robin's housewarming party, Robin's return to the office and the unexpected calls from Billy and Chiswell, Strike's lunch with Chiswell in Pratt's, followed by his meeting with Robin, overnight with Lorelei and his delivery of listening devices to Chiswell's London House. 

A Return to Blogging with a New Test of the Double Wedding Band Model: Looking for connections between Philosopher's Stone and Lethal White.

 Greetings to my readers and other Strike/Potter fans! I am back from the longest blogging break I've taken in a while. I am happy to announce that I return with the new title of Granny to CJ, the, in my unashamedly biased opinion, the most perfect and beautiful granddaughter ever born. Since I have chosen to keep her full name private, and respect her parents' wishes not to display her face on social media, you'll simply have to take my word for it that she is absolutely and completely adorable. 

During my break, I've been mulling over what to blog about as we continue to wait for Sleep Tight, Evangeline. I finally drew inspiration from:

• first, the new series of Three Broomsticks podcasts I've been doing: looking at connections between the Strike books and the corresponding Potter books, so starting with Philosopher's Stone and Cuckoo's Calling and
• second, the Double Wedding Band model for the Strike series, which hypothesizes that tha last seven books of the series will form a ring structure, much as the first seven did, and as the seven Harry Potter books did. See here, here and here for more information. 

As I have noted before, one of the strongest arguments in favor of DWB is the fact that it predicted connections between THM and Order of the Phoenix, of which there were many. This gives me hope that the final three books of the Strike series will connect to the final three Potter books both alchemically and thematically.

But, what of the earlier books of the putative second ring? That's what I have decided to explore for the next few months.

The Strike Advent Adventure, Part 1: Chapters 1-7

 

*Sniff*  It's the Ellacott Family
Land Rover's last Christmas!

Welcome back, Strike Advent Adventurers. I am so happy to have readers join me for a holiday re-read of the first three parts of The Hallmarked Man, finishing with the unveiling of Strike's Best Gift Ever. But there's a way to go before we get there, so let's get started.  

What struck me on this re-read was how well the tone for the rest of the book is set up in these early chapters. There was a darkness and an awkwardness, with some chapters seeming to end quite abruptly, and opening lines that set up long-term conflicts in the story.  I'm going to review the first and last lines of each chapter; if it seems helpful maybe I'll continue that pattern through the re-read. 

Double Wedding Band or a Three-Ring Circus? Why I'll be searching for Cuckoo connections in the Hallmarked re-read.

 A few posts back, I was pondering a revision of the Double Wedding Band structural model  (See here, here and here for background information) thanks to the unexpected observation of many substantial links between The Hallmarked Man and Career of Evil, noticed by me and multiple other readers. Fortunately, there is a relatively quick fix, which is to add a "big ring" chiastic model to the other major patterns seen,  the Double Wedding Band and the Leapfrog Effect. To do this, simply consider the full ten-part series as one giant ring, and make the five predicted turtle-back connections:  1-10; 2-9; 3-8; 4-7; and 5-6.  

This nicely accounts for the CoE-THM connections, as well as the LW-TRG connections and the TB-TIBH connections seen earlier. It also generates testable predictions (Yay!) for Books 9 and 10, namely, that they will connect to The Silkworm and The Cuckoo's Calling respectively. 

However, while looking at the single ring, I started playing with some other patterns, and, while I sometimes felt like I was playing with my old Spirograph. I came up with a new model that may let me scrap the Double Wedding Band entirely.  Find out more after the break. 

The 3-5 links to The Hallmarked Man: One set predicted by Double Wedding Band, another not.

One of the reasons I was especially looking forward to the publication of The Hallmarked Man was that it was the first real test of the Double Wedding Band model. (See here, here and here for background information).  In short, I think we see three basic patterns in the Strike series that are best accounted for by viewing the 10-part series as two overlapping rings: the first staring with CC and ending with TRG; 

1. The basic "turtle-back" connections that are so obvious in Harry Potter should be seen in both rings, 
1. Book 2-Book 6
2. Book 3-Book 5
3. The beginning-turning point-end triangulation between Books 1-4-7. 
2. The "ring correspondence" connections, where Book 1 of the first ring (CC) connects to Book 1 of the second ring (LW) and so on. This gives us the following: (note that the starred connections are duplicated in the turtle-back triangulations, above).  
1. CC-LW*
2. Silkworm-TB
3. CoE-TIBH
4. LW-TRG*
5. TB-THM
6. TIBH-Book 9
7. TRG-Book 10. *
3. While not necessarily a part of the Double Wedding Band, there is also good evidence for the Leapfrog Effect: the tendency of odd-numbered books to pair with other odd-numbered, and evens with evens. This gives us 20 total pairings, four of which (2-6, 3-5, 1-7, and 4-10) are already listed above. 

It is the ring correspondence component of the model that got its first real test for predictive power with THM.  I originally came up with the Double Wedding Band to explain the large number of linkages between CoE and TIBH and between Silkworm and Troubled Blood. These two connections are not predicted by the turtleback or leapfrog effects, but are accounted for by the ring correspondence. 

Thus, I went into THM with two testable hypotheses:  

• First: If the ring correspondence model works, then The Hallmarked Man, as the 5th book of Ring 2 (and #8 in the series), should have lots of correspondences with Troubled Blood, the fifth book of Ring 1. 

Furthermore, the ring correspondence could potentially help answer the question that has been nagging us: what happens to the idea of Strike being a parallel series to Harry Potter once we hit book 8 and are out of Potter books? 

• The answer (and second hypothesis) is, we back up and look for connections to Book #5 of Harry Potter, Order of the Phoenix. 

Did the Double Wedding Band model pass the test?  Find out below.

2-4-6-8, What Do We Appreciate? : The Hallmarked Man connections predicted by the Leapfrog effect.

A big feature of the Double Wedding Band model (see here, here and here for background information) is that it incorporates one of the more obvious patterns of the Strike series: the Leapfrog effect, or the tendency of odd numbered books to connect with odd numbers and and evens with evens. The Hallmarked Man continues this pattern  

What I am most excited about is those connections that have, thus so far, turned up in all four the even-numbered books. I'm going to call this the "Truly Appreciated" list, both because I was happy to see them and because I think they should top the list of predictions for book 10. 

The Hallmarked Man: The Strike series answer to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child? (Spoilers for both!)

The thematic connections between the first seven Cormoran Strike books and the corresponding Harry Potter books is something I and other Strike enthusiasts have written about extensively.  Some examples include:

• My Harry Potter Academic Conference talk from 2023. 
• The Troubled Blood-Order of the Phoenix parallel noted at the time of publication. 
• Irvin Khaytman's essay on the connections between The Ink Black Heart and The Half-Blood Prince
• Beatrice Groves' magazine article on the same topic.
• Connections between The Running Grave and The Deathly Hallows
• Links to dozens of other posts on the topic. 

The thematic similarities between the first seven Strike books and the Harry Potter series makes me think it is highly likely that, as reported by UK Sunday Times Arts editor Richard Brooks in February 2014, Rowling initially planned the Strike series as seven books. The Times was, after all, the paper that used forensic literary analysis to document similarities between Cuckoo's Calling and other Rowling works, and it seems unlikely they would publish that claim unless they had reason to believe it was true, although their source of information may have been out of date  Galbraith immediately denied that seven books were planned and by July 2014, announced there would be more than seven books, perhaps even an open-ended series.  By April 2023, the author had decided the series would be complete at ten. The simplest explanation is, after being outed much sooner than planned, "Galbraith" rethought the series plan. And, as we well know, whether writing as Rowling or Galbraith, this author is selective about how much of the planning process is shared. 

So, is there any point in considering the Parallel Series Hypothesis, now that we've hit #8 in the Strike Series?  Find out after the jump. 

Pre-Hallmarked re-read of Troubled Blood starts July 21.

As I mentioned earlier, I am taking a break from blogging, then will resume with my final re-read before The Hallmarked Man:  the book that probably gets the most votes for people's favorite of the series, that cold case marvel, Troubled Blood.

As regular readers know, per the Double Wedding Band model (see here and here) I hypothesize that the 10-book Strike Series is written in two overlapping 7 part rings, with, in addition to the usual "leapfrog" pattern (even-numbered books connecting to evens; odds to odds) I am predicting thematic connections between the corresponding books on the ring. Thus, we saw lots of connections between Cuckoo's Calling (#1 on first ring) and Lethal White (#1 on second ring); between The Silkworm and Troubled Blood, between Career of Evil and The Ink Black Heart  and between Lethal White and The Running Grave.  Now, we are looking for connections between Troubled Blood and The Hallmarked Man. Even from the hints and previews I have identified two:  (Spoiler warning):

Lethal White Chapter 36-42: A return to the opening of Cuckoo's Calling, and the start of a new ring?

Love is good, love can be strong

We gotta get right back to where we started from.

                                                -Maxine Nightingale

After Chiswell's body was found, "Part Two" of the book begins. John Granger noticed at LW's publication that there was no "Part One" at the start of the book. At the time, it was widely assumed that Cormoran Strike would be a 7 book series, like Harry Potter, and that the "Part Two" did not just mean the second half of Book 4, but the turning point to the entire series. However, when the news came that Strike would be a 10-book series instead, that idea seemed less likely.  Instead, I have suggested, per the double wedding band model (see here and here) that this orphan "Part Two" instead marks the beginning of a second 7-part ring. Looking carefully at the first few chapters of Part Two gives me an even stronger sense of "resetting" the story in a way that strongly echoes the first few chapters of The Cuckoo's Calling. 

• Strike's face is bruised and battered, in CC from Charlotte's scratches and hurled ashtray, in LW from his fight with Jimmy Knight. 
• Though not nearly as broke as they were in CC, the agency is in a financially precarious situation, in part because of non-payment by a client. Robin reviews the accounts in Chapter 36 and says, "They'd look a lot healthier if Chiswell had paid his bill."  
• In Chapter 3 of CC, Strike is "chasing" multiple clients for payment and facing a lot of unpaid bills. 
• Strike has just walked away from Charlotte. In CC he left her at her posh flat; in LW he left her at the posh Lancaster House. 
• Robin has witnessed Charlotte leaving a building (the Denmark Street office in CC, Lancaster House in LW, and is wondering what is going on between her and Strike.
• Within a couple of chapters, a wealthy client (John Bristow, Izzy Chiswell) will provide some financial relief in the form of a nice fat check. 
• This client is the relative of a recently deceased famous person, whose death the police are inclined to think is suicide. 
• The client is, instead, convinced it is murder and wants Strike to prove it. 

The Hallmarked Man will be the first real test for predictive power of the Double Wedding Band model, which predicts that, in addition to having connections with the other even-numbered books of the series. as Book # 5 in Ring #2, it will have thematic connections to Book #5 of Ring #1, Troubled Blood. Also, if there are Harry Potter echoes in THM, I predict we will backtrack to Book #5 of that series, Order of the Phoenix.

Are there hints from pre-publication publicity that this will be the case?  Find out after the jump. Spoilers for Twitter Headers and THM cover blurb ahead. 

The Hallmark Man Publication Date Moved Up: Join me in a 200-day countdown!

 Serious Striker hearts were aflutter this week when the publication date of The Hallmarked Man was moved to one week earlier, on Sept 2, 2025!  I have updated the countdown and hastened in my planning for a 200-day THM Countdown Re-read.  

Last time we were awaiting a book, I re-read the entire series in preparation.  I decided that was a bit much this time, so instead, I am proposing a re-read of the four books I think most likely to connect thematically to The Hallmarked Man, per my double-wedding-band structural model. You can see more details here and here, but the gist of it is, like Harry Potter, the first seven Strike books formed a structured ring with connections between books 3 and 5, 2 and 6 and 1, 4, 7. (See John Granger's work on ring structure for more of this modeling). In addition to the leapfrog pattern which connects the odd-numbered Strike books to each other, and the even-numbered to each other, I hypothesize that the last seven Strike books will form their own 7-part ring.  In addition, Since The Hallmarked Man is book #5 on this second ring, we can expect it to connect to #5 on the first ring, Troubled Blood. 

Under this model, The Hallmarked Man will make connections to all even-numbered books, but especially 2 and 6, plus book 5.  I therefore am going to suggest re-reading those books, with a particular eye toward what has been revealed about The Hallmarked Man via Galbraith's twitter headers, emojis and other hints. In particular, I want to consider the one known epigraph source, Maid of the Silver Sea. 

I propose to start the re-read on February 14th, exactly 200 days before THM publication. With 200 days to cover 4 books, that gives us 50 days per book. Furthermore, I'm going to suggest reading them out of order, starting with the most recent (and one fresh of on our minds thanks to the recent release of the TV show): The Ink Black Heart. So, fittingly, we wll join Strike and Robin at their "first date" at the Ritz on Valentine's Day. Yes, it wll end badly, but Valentine's Days always seem to such in JKR/RG novels. We'll plan to finish with Harty and friends by April 4.

Here's the rest of the plan:  

April 5- May 24:  TIBH's ring-structure twin, The Silkworm. 

May 25-July 14:  Troubled Blood

July 14-September 1: Lethal White

That takes us up to Hallmark Day.  

I'll post more detailed reading schedules later, but my plan is to work through each book over that 50 day period, posting 2-3 days per week. 

I look forward to a great fresh look at the series and thoughtful discussion here. 

Tune in tomorrow for my review of The Ink Black Heart TV show, Part 3. 

Rings, Double-bands, Stars and Asterisks: Which model works works for a ten-book Cormoran Strike series? (Plus: who it predicts killed Leda!)

Several weeks ago, I made the first efforts at a revised structural model , the "Double Wedding Band" or a ten-part Strike series, based on the connections seen between volumes to date.  To my surprise, that proved to be one of the most popular posts that has provoked some great comments. I have been eagerly waiting to see what other Serious Strikers would think of the connections The Running Grave makes to other Strike novels. 

I got my wish a week or so ago. Dr. John Granger is back to doing what he does best and recognized, as ring structure predicts, that The Running Grave does, indeed, "latch" to The Cuckoo's Calling, in the same way that the first Harry Potter book, Philosopher's Stone, latches with the seventh and last, Deathly Hallows. John literally wrote the book on the ring composition of Harry Potter, and I encourage Strike fans to check out his application of both the "turtleback" and the "asterisk" to Cormoran Strike.  I also encourage readers to answer his call for more CC-TRG echoes, which, as of this posting, no Substack reader has heeded, although some contributions can be found at the wordpress placeholder post.  Lest anyone think I am being secretive, I did link to my own long list in a comment, which, amusingly, Dr. Granger apparently choose to remove. 

Unfortunately, Dr. Granger's turtleback and asterisk models, which very elegantly account for Harry Potter series echoes, fail to account for all the echoes we see in the Strike-Ellacott series. For example:

1. The Silkworm-Troubled Blood connections: The many connections between these two books initially inspired my 2022 idea that TB was originally intended as a Book Six albedo. At the time, even Mr. Granger called the idea a "convincing" "brilliant" and "radical piece of reverse prognostication", but I had to eventually dismiss the idea when Rowling herself denied it. 
2. The Cuckoo's Calling-Career of Evil connections:  The most obvious connection is the in vino veritas confessions in the Tottenham, Strike to Robin in CC, Robin-to-Strike in CoE, but there are certainly others.  This was originally part of my Double Pentagram proposal, which had some advantages, but did not work so well when TIBH turned out to have the connections it did. 
3. The Troubled Blood- The Running Grave connections: Both the Strike and Ellacott files podcast and the Three Broomsticks predictions episode foresaw these, based on the number of Lethal White-The Ink Black Heart connections observed. This prediction certainly came through, in spades. It is, I believe, the only list that comes close to rivaling Lethal White-Goblet of Fire connections in sheer number. In fact, the overall large number of connections between non-adjacent books inspired my Leapfrog post. 
4. The major exception to the non-adjacent connections rule: the thematic links and resetting processes that happend in Troubled Blood and The Ink Black Heart.  Not only do the main murders connect, with Gus as an amalgam of the three TB killers, the books themselves invert the expected dry-nigredo/ wet-albudo pairings and several progressions between the "best friends" are reversed or reset in ITBH. 

The Double Wedding Band Model: a Possible New Model for a 10-Part Strike and Ellacott Series

As many of you know, I am fond of applying structural models to both Harry Potter and Cormoran Strike novels. I owe a debt of gratitude to John Granger for his inspirational work on Ring Composition and Parallel Series.   John is doing some very interesting work on ring structure within the nine parts of The Running Grave, which, if you are interested in the book's internal structure, is worth checking out on his regular and Substack sites, along with the excellent work by his current colleagues Nick Jeffrey, Evan Willis and Elizabeth Baird Hardy. 

Ever since JKR/RG confirmed that the Strike series would be ten books, I've been going over how Ring Structure and Parallel Series models can be adjusted into a a model that fits, especially since so many of the predictions made originally, like The Running Grave linking to Cuckoo's Calling and Lethal White and having lots of Deathly Hallows echoes., seem to still be coming true. I've also been scratching my head for something that accounts for the relatively simple observations that even and odd-numbered books seem to pair up with each other well, as well as the special connections and resets between Troubled Blood and The Ink Black Heart. 

And, I think I have something that works, at least until Book Eight comes out. More information, and TRG spoilers, after the jump. 

Lethal Black and Leapfrogging: Connections between the Strike & Ellacott Books Four and Six (plus links to many other pairings!)

 In looking over various connections between the Strike books and structural models that have been proposed to explain them, onc thing has become very clear:  so far, there is a strong pattern of even-numbered books connecting with even, and odd-numbered books connecting to odd.  Some of these connections, like Book 2-Book 6 and Book 3-Book 5, are predicted by ring composition, but many are not.  For lack of a better term, I'll call this the Leapfrog Model. 

Some of the compiled lists are available among mine and others' writings the old Hogwarts professor site, more recent are on this site. 

In the interest of having all connections in one place, I will compile a full set here.

Odds:                                     Evens

Book 1 and Book 3                Book 2 and Book 4

Book 1 and Book 5                Book 2 and Book 6:  See also here and here.

Book 1 and Book 7 ; see also here.               

Book 3 and Book 5

Book 3 and Book 7

Book 5 and Book 7; see also here. 

More after the jump. 

Ths Silkworm's Career of Running Black Ink: What connections are there between the The Running Grave and Strike 2, 3, and 6?

Ring Composition predicts that there would be far few connections between The Running Grave and Books 2, 3 and 6 than seen with books 4 and 7. But, you never know.  John Granger has shown that a simple turtle-back ring diagram  does not explain all connections in Harry Potter (such as the many echoes between books 1 and 5 and between books 3 and 7); for explanation, see his asterisk model.  There are multiple connections, such as the many already documented between Troubled Blood and The Running Grave, that, best I can tell, are predicted neither by ring structure or the asterisk. I myself fell into the trap of being so busy looking for connections between Troubled Blood and Career of Evil, that I missed many equally strong connections between Troubled Blood and The Silkworm.  

I am working on a new, comprehensive model of how remainder of the series might be structured, now that we have seen Book seven and know to expect ten, but it will likely take a while to get that together. So, this is where we need sharp-eyed Serious Strikers, who are perhaps not as biased towards specific hypotheses as I am, to not be shy about identifying connections that come up.  As I said, I am not expecting as many compared to the long lists already compiled for Books 1, 4 and 5, but I would be happy to be proved wrong. Given the connections seen between Prisoner of Azkaban and Deathly Hallows, we might expect more with CoE, but who knows?

Spoilers below. 

The Cuckoo's Lethal Grave: Connections between Strike Books 1, 4 and 7.

 Ring Structure predicts that the first and last books of a seven book series. John Grnager has written extensively on within- and between book rings in Harry Potter, producing an entire book on the topic.  Given that is clear that Cormoran Strike is a parallel series to Harry Potter,  Ring structure has also been an analytic tool for Strike and Robin's adventures. This post will collect links to Cuckoo's Calling and Lethal White, with a bonus section for three-way parallels. Spoilers in blue. 

The Running Troubled Blood: Connections between Strike Books 5 and 7.

 The Strike and Ellacott Files Podcast made notes of many connections between Lethal White and The Ink Black Heart and, accordingly, predicted connections between Troubled Blood and The Running Grave. There were certainly plenty.  I've mentioned quite a few as I've blogged through, and I'm putting together this post to compile more. Spoilers below.