Suggestions for links to other Harry Potter books are also welcome. See here for the echoes to Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
THM links to other even-numbered books can be found here.
THM links to Career of Evil and Troubled Blood can be found here.
Onto the full list!
I went into The Hallmarked Man thinking this would be a second albedo volume, following The Running Grave, which was clearly albedo with all of the baptisms, rivers, rain and cleansing showers we saw, along with Strike's own self-improvement, with his weight loss and smoking cessation. There were huge hints of this from the author's Tweets, which showed us silver ships and white swans. We were told that Dean Martin's "Silver Bells" would feature, suggesting Christmas, with snow and twinkling white lights. Even the title referred to a "hallmark"-- a stamp indicating the degree of purity in a precious metal. The scene was indeed set for a silverly-white, cold and snowy journey to purification, similar to what was seen in The Half-Blood Prince and Catching Fire.
Another reason I was fully expecting albedo was that, after Strike's nigredo-duo of Troubled Blood and The Ink Black Heart, and his albedo in The Running Grave, another albedo would fit well with the "extended play" model proposed by Kathleen on Hogwartsprofessor several years ago as a means of stretching a seven book series out to ten.
Did that come to pass? Well, not exactly.....
The news today from the Galbraith website is that The Hallmarked Man paperback is available for purchase. To date, I have not bought any of the paperbacks, though I get the hardbacks and audiobooks on the day of publication. One thing I am always curious about, though, is to what extent errors in the original text get corrected in later editions. I am always wondering if we'll get another substantial re-write like we did when Australian Vashti-saleswoman Mia Thompson was added to Cuckoo's Calling.
If anyone out there is reading the paperback and notices any error corrections, please her me know either in the comments or in the direct messages. The errors noted in THM to date can be found here:
General errors noted by myself and others:
Substantial mix-up in dates and times in 96-98.
Another list of errors and why I think they weakened THM as a whole.
There are also lots of timeline inconsistencies highlighted in red in the timelines I have prepared for Robin and Strike's lives.
Please let me know what, if anything, you find.
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I am just back from a fantastic trip to Germany and Denmark, with day trips into the Czech Republic and Sweden. When you take a trip like that after months of immersion in the latest Strike book, it can't help but color your perspective. At the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin, for instance, two paintings jumped out at me.
Minor note: I have learned that a Quick-Quotes Quill -wielding website has misrepresented my overall take on The Hallmarked Man, claiming I characterized it as "a real stinker" and "the worst book ever." After over three decades as a PhD student, post-doc and tenured university professor, I have learned to be more amused that irritated when this sort of thing happens. Even the best readers get careless sometimes, so focused on inventing a straw-man antithesis to their own position that they gloss over helpfully highlighted summaries, such as that which appeared in the final post of my Real-Time Re-read.
I've read or listened to the earlier Strike books dozens of times. I've lost track of how many times I've re-read THM, but, given that I read each section at least 2-3 times when doing a detailed blog-through like the one I have just completed, it must be six or seven by now. Did THM improve on re-reading? Yes, absolutely. Did it, for me, lift itself out of last place? No, it didn't. For this summary I have re-read not the book but all of my detailed blog posts, from the Advent Adventure to the Real-time Re-read, for the purposes of summarizing what changed for me and what didn't.
My plan is to review the last two chapters here. Then, later in the week, I'll post a round-up on how my impressions changed with the re-read, and where I think The Hallmarked Man stacks up in relationship to the rest of the series
“In a way," said Decima Mullins, "I feel as though he did die.”
Thus begins Chapter 126, possibly the saddest closing wrap-up in the series. We already know the sad endings to two of the Wright candidates, with Semple's suicide and Powell's brutal murder. We see Decima here, wishing she'd never have found out the truth about her son't parentage and still clearly having strong feelings and desire for the man that she can never have. The best they can hope for is a platonic relationship as they strive to raise their child together and debate for the next dozen years or so whether it would be better or worse for him to know the truth about his parentage. The only comfort Strike can give her is the knowledge that her persistence in pursuing the case revealed the truth about both Semple and Powell, and, perhaps more importantly, rescued Sapphire Neagle from a terrible fate. Strike and Robin, naturally, promise never to reveal the secret about the incest and fortunately, mouthy subcontractors like KFC never found out.
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| "Engraved with the regimen's winged dagger badge" |
Eleven days after Ian Griffiths and friends had been taken into custody, and Strike and Sapphire Neagle had been driven by ambulance to the Princess Royal Hospital in Telford, Strike donned his only black suit in his attic flat, and drove, again, to Hereford.
We learn that Strike had correctly deduced that Niall Semple had committed suicide by jumping off the Regents' Park Bridge, with a weighted-down briefcase shackled to his wrist. His widow, Jade, has invited Strike to attend the funeral, and Strike feels he should do this, rather than accompany Robin on her trip to "tidy away the last fragment of the silver vault case."
Last January, I did a quick update of the Strike and Robin Pre- and Inter-book Timelines I have maintained for several years. Now that I am nearly done with The Hallmarked Man Real-time re-read, I have again updated both documents.
The new Strike timeline is available here.
The new Robin timeline is available here.
Along with those I have a new timeline of Charlotte Campbell's life pre-Cuckoo's Calling. set up as a blog post.
Night had fallen by the time Strike decided it was safe for him to re-enter the small town that had seemed so quaintly beautiful by daylight.
Robin was at home, alone. Night had fallen, her curtains were closed, her door double-locked, her alarm on, and the dining room chair was still propped beneath the handle of the front door.
Fortunately, her anxiety is lifted by a call from Midge, who shows that listening to a recorded interview is the next best thing to being there. We learn first that Wright was kind enough to help the Mohamed family with their daughter's wheelchair. Even better, Robin's speculations about the weights were right on the money.
Robin left Martin asleep on the sofa bed in the sitting room the following morning and headed for the office. There was something she wanted to say to Strike face to face, so she forced herself to drive into town, checking her rear-view mirror constantly, and feeling shaky and exposed during the short walk to Denmark Street.
Robin arrives to Pat's news that Travolta the fish has died, then joins Wardle and Strike in the inner office. Strike fills her in on the confrontation with Plug & Associates the previous night, which resulted in Plug's arrest and his son being transferred to the custody of his great-uncle but with Dev Shah getting stabbed in the thigh. But, turns out that is only part of Dev's current issues with the job. He's been listening to KFC and not only arguing with Strike about the ethics of Decima Mullins' case, but also speculating Strike has sexually harassed Kim. This is not the week to ask him to fill out an employee satisfaction review. Strike is convinced Shah's going to jump the S & E ship for Navabi's, so Wardle offers to set him straight about KFC's past shenanigans at the Met.
The large, twisted trees lining the road and the stretches of prime farmland were like a landscape seen in a half-forgotten dream. Strike tried to take consolation from the magnificent indifference of nature to all human concerns, but the strategy was so ineffective it was almost a relief to turn up the side road leading to Heberley, and focus his mind on what needed to be done.
Fresh off the epic showdown with Lord Branfoot and the Kimphomaniac, Strike now travels to back to Yorkshire to confront a much older enemy, the woman who was a major factor in Charlotte's terrible childhood and the reason, as he says, "she was never going to make old bones."
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| "Seated at a small round table beside the marble fireplace, framed botanical prints on the wall behind her." |
The readjustment of Robin’s work schedule would have made it extremely difficult to cover the agency’s current jobs, had they not resolved Two-Times.
Chapter 107 picks up on Friday, March 10th. With Robin on restricted duty, the agency isn't taking on any new clients. Wardle has some background on Wade King and his profile does not fit one of Branfoot's ex-con henchmen, but King, like the late Jim Todd, was a former long distance truck driver. Strike, in the meantime, remains convinced Robin has accepted RFM's marriage proposal and is rehearsing a convincing congratulations, without much success.
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| Yes, they actually make these door knockers. |
The townhouse outside which Strike arrived half an hour later was tall and white, with columns either side of the glossy black front door. When he got close enough to see it, he saw that instead of the standard lion’s head, the brass door knocker was in the shape of an electric guitar. Strike chose to ring the bell.
But, I must say, I like the opening sentence of Chapter 99:
Several things happened in quick succession the following morning to thoroughly destabilise Robin.
This could be the epigraph for the entire book.
News of the murders of Jim Todd and his mother hit the London Evening Standard the following day. To Strike’s relief, his presence at the scene wasn’t mentioned.
RFM and Robin finally meet again on this same day; she (ugh!) agrees not to leave him but the house-hunting is on hold pending the "rebuilding of trust." Interestingly, RFM may well be lying even in the midst of this reconciliation talk.
Strike’s professional life had more often seen him as interrogator rather than interrogated, but in recent years he’d found himself on the uncomfortable end of a police interview far more often than he’d have liked.