A Serial Killer's Rebounding Spell: My talk from the 2025 Harry Potter Academic Conference.

 I've just finished up with one of my favorite weekends of the year, the annual Harry Potter Academic Conference at Chestnut Hill College. This year I hosted a panel called "The Mirror of Rettopyrrah: Wizarding World reflections in post-Potter books." 

My contribution was "A Serial Killer's Rebounding Spell: A Deathly Hallows echo in Troubled Blood." 
 It compares Strike's interview with Creed to Harry's final duel with Voldemort. 

Please check it out. 

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.

Troubled Blood: Chapters 63-67: The plot thickens, and quickens.

 

Please note:  This is a spoiler-free post, so please no spoilers in the comments. I also have not committed to reading the 12 chapters recently released in German, so this site will remain free of those spoilers for the time being.

Chapter 63 shows our heroes continuing to work on the Bamborough case through the end of August. SB conveniently shows up willing to pay the agency to dig up dirt on Shifty, so they are able to resume that job.  It is this point at the narrative that the pace of the Bamborough mystery really picks up, with witnesses who have eluded them for a year suddenly popping out of the woodwork, with Strike locating Douthwaite the day Robin gets permission for him to interview Creed, then Gloria Conti magically finding the emails her husband had deleted and contacting them on the day of the Douthwaite. This is one of several ways TRG runs in parallel with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, in which the trio, after taking months to find and destroy the locket horcrux, are able to identify, find and destroy the cup, the diadem and the snake within a couple of days. 

Robin meets up with Jemma in an upscale bar, where she is able to befriend her after learning her boyfriend "Andy," who has ghosted her, is actually Saul Morris.  After lots of tea wine and sympathy, Robin finally gets the dirt on Shifty, who sexually harasses his PA, sexually assaulted her when she was drunk on a business trip, and is insider training. After the encounter, Robin gets the welcome news that Strike will be allowed to interview Dennis Creed in September. She calls him to find he has news of his own: with a stroke of luck almost equal to his chance sighting of Samhain Athorn, he deduced Douthewaite's newest surname and has located him in the beach town of Skegness. Amusingly, Robin's cracking the Shifty case, which has been preoccupying the agency for more than a year, is relegated to almost an afterthought ("Shifty? Yeah, he's insider trading, but...), as she, after insisting she doesn't want to to upstage Strike (oh yes you do, girl!) tells him about Creed. 

I think it is another subtle bit of commentary on exploitation of women that, after multiple sexual crimes, including probable rape, it is the financial crime that will likely bring Shifty down.

Troubled Blood, Chapters 57-62: The part that contains Chapter 58. Plus, a small Hallmarked Man spoiler (cover blurbs and Galbraith interviews, not the chapter preview!)

I must say, the description of the "5-star" American Bar, decorated with pennants and baseball caps, seems a bit incongruous to me, given that so many very casual sports bars in the US have that type of decor. I mean, I'm sure it is classy (and expensive) but....  pennants?

I know I have mentioned this before, but I am always bothered by Robin's statement that this was the "very first time" she'd told Strike she knew who his father was bugs me. While perhaps technically true, this absolutely should not be an issue that concerns her. Strike heard Robin say "That's very kind of Mr. Rokeby" during a talk with Peter Gillespie back in Book one, she met his brother Al Rokeby in Book 2, they had a talk about Leda, the Deadbeats and "old Jonny" in Book 3, and stood side by side reading an article on her phone that called Strike "the illegitimate son of rocker Jonny Rokeby" in Book 4. There has also been tons of annoying press coverage, and Rokeby would have been mentioned in any story about Strike. Strike's parentage is like the camp bed in CC, she knows, he knows she knows, and she knows he knows she knows. The idea that she is giving away some big secret here is absurd. 

Troubled Blood, Chapters 51-56: Three interviews, the scattering of ashes and a rescue by phone.

This section is bookended with interviews with the two oldest witnessed we see in this case:  Brian Tucker (Ch. 51)  and Betty Fuller (Ch. 56). Interestingly, Robin's behavior is at polar opposites in these two settings.  With Tucker, she is acting entirely on her own initiative, to the extent that she is worried her actions with anger Strike and even "backfire badly on the agency" --  though I find it hard to understand either. They are, of course, trying to learn as much about Dennis Creed as possible, and they know from Roy Phipps that Tucker has spent his life studying Creed. 

Another interesting note;  Brian Tucker uses the same term Robert Galbraith used in a recent video describing The Hallmarked Man, when he describes the experience of losing his daughter with "it marks you." 

With Betty Fuller, Robin starts off planning a routine and approved interview on her own, taking the type of witness for which she is normally better suited than Strike (a vulnerable older lady) and winds up going completely passive and letting Strike take the lead.  Atypically, Strike winds up being the better choice to ask questions of Mrs. Fuller than is Robin, likely because he has more understanding of the kind of rough world that Betty comes from than Robin, with her relatively sheltered, middle-class farm-girl upbringing. Leta probably knew multiple women who supported themselves the way Betty Fuller did. 

Troubled Blood: Chapters 45-50. A spa town, a funeral and a nurse.

 

Good for Robin for sending flowers from the agency. And for shooting down Morris's suggestion of "Rich Bitch" for the client nickname. Just aa in the last section, where we saw Strike run the gauntlet of emotions and general sensitivity, we get to see Robin really come into her own as second-in-command of the agency, making decisions about clients, assignments and the trip to Leamington Spa on her own. She heads to the spa village and discovers the church yard where Margot was supposedly spied perusing the cemetery has no cemetery. She then has a moment in a pub when she spies someone who looks like Strike from the back, which sends her into a spiral of self-exploration (some would say self-delusion) about her feelings for her partner, and again convinces herself she feels friendship and admiration for him, nothing more. This sentiment will stay with her until she learns he is dating Madeline in TIBH. 

Troubled Blood Chapters 39-44: Prepare for an emotional roller coaster (and spoilers for The Hallmarked Man preview).

 This post will take us from the Dinner Party From Hell to Joan's deathbed. We'll see Strike in his most obnoxious and his most tender scenes and at his most inconsiderate and most responsible moments. While not all my pre-Hallmarked Man re-read of Troubled Blood posts will include spoilers from the preview (released on audiobook yesterday!) this one will. So, be forewarned and buckle up. 

Troubled Blood Chapters 34-38: The Phipps and the Athorns

Strike returns from Cornwall, glad to have visited but emotionally drained, grieving and stressed, craving only solitude as he returns to London and gets back to work. Alone in his flat on a Sunday evening, while making dinner and reviewing reports, he gets another message from Prudence, to which he responds quite reasonably, expressing interest in meeting her at some point but not in having anything to do with Rokeby. He dreams that night of having a fistfight with his father on a sailing ship and both get tossed into the sea. This is an odd bit of imagery, and as I read through this time, I wonder if this is some sort of foreshadowing of the silver neff sailing ship that was one of JKR's twitter headers for The Hallmarked Man.  Will that piece of hallmarked silver have some connection to Strike's father? Or does the dream symbolize Ted's boat, with Strike trying to stay afloat with his Nancarrow parents while fighting off his biological father's intrusion? 

Troubled Blood Chapters 28-33: Have Yourself a Lousy Little Christmas

One of the Hallmarked Man hints we have gotten from Twitter is that Dean Martin's "Silver Bells" will be significant, which, along with the hypothesized dates (late 2015 2016 to at least February 2016 2017) makes us think we will be celebrating Christmas with our favorite detectives in Book 8. I am really hoping it will be a happier holiday than we have seen before. In The Silkworm, we saw the lead-up to Christmas, including Strike buying revenge gifts for his nephews and Timothy Anstis, and even decorated a tree with Kath and Pippa. Our heroes were heading off to presumably enjoyable holidays with their families in St. Mawes and Masham at the end, but we don't see the celebration itself.  In The Ink Black Heart, Christmas itself was glossed over, with Strike going to St. Mawes but Robin volunteering to stay in London. Though we get to see how they spend New Years, we don't see any Yuletide festivities of the team in London or learn what our heroes got each other for presents. 

So far, the only time we have actually seen a Christmas Day is in Troubled Blood, and, frankly, it sucks for both of them, with Strike and Robin physically apart and both miserable for their own reasons. I was really hoping Robin would dump Ryan at the start of THM, and Christmas would see the start of them as a couple, but given the cover blurb, that seems unlikely. But, I am guessing that, as in TB, we'll see some sort of drama on the day itself. Maybe Murphy will surprise Robin with an engagement ring in her stocking?  Perhaps Ted, who will likely be residing in a London care home,  will spill some Strike, Nancarrow or Rokeby secret over a turkey dinner at Lucy's? At the very least, I hope Pat will be handing out tins of her famous fruitcake. 

Troubled Blood Chapters 21-27: From Paddington Bear to "Shaggable You." Plus: Narration errors in the audiobook?

Strike and Robin head to the pub to review the interview with Janice and Irene and to celebrate Strike's birthday. A few items of note:

• Brenner's sister told police the he had arrived home "at the usual time" but we are never told what time that was. Given it was a Friday night, Brenner's "usual" time home would be after his weekly meeting with Betty Fuller. 
• Strike puts his finger on the right answer for the wrong reasons when he speculates that Margot might have been drugged, but acknowledges that it would take many pills to do the job. We will later learn that Margaret was drugged, but via injected doughnut, not pills. 
• The anecdote about Uncle Ted and the "Bennies" of the Falkland Islands war always seemed weirdly out of place. It's not a particularly funny joke, and adds nothing to the story, so the only reason I can see for it to be included is to establish that Uncle Ted was in the Falklands. Assuming he was there at the time of the combat, this would be April-June 1982. This is about a year before Charlie Bristow's death on Easter 1983.* Ted must have been back by late 1983, which is the approximate time he showed up in Brixton to threaten Shumba with a bloody nose and take the kids back to St. Mawes-- the only time we have heard of Ted and Joan insisting on taking Leda's kids, rather than waiting for her to dump them. I am still wondering if, as Ted's dementia progresses, we will learn more about this period in Strike's childhood, perhaps something related to how Ted knew the children were in Brixton and to the reason Joan wanted Strike to reconcile with Rokeby. 
• I think we are supposed to see this deployment as part of Ted's army career, but the timing seems odd. Ted, we are told, is 79 in 2015, giving him a birthdate of 1936 (about 16 years older than Leda, b. 1952) and making him around 46 in 1982. Yet, later in this same book, Ted's military career is described as "that strange interlude where Ted, in revolt against his own father, had disappeared for several years into the military police." The mid-forties is an odd age to either join the service or rebel against your father, especially when it has been assumed, given that Strike does not seem to remember his Nancarrow grandparents, that they had died before Strike and Lucy began residing intermittently in St. Mawes, circa 1978. So what is Ted doing nipping off to the Falklands in 1982? Was he in the Red Cap version of the reserves? 
• I think there are still many interesting Nancarrow family secrets to be uncovered when the St. Mawes house is cleared out for sale. 
• Running in parallel with the them of parenting choices in this book is the theme of what happens to people, with and without children, in their old age. We have seen an ideal situation with the Gupta's: growing old together, with a comfortable income and children and grandchildren to enjoy. We see another vignette here of the 80-year-old lady celebrating her birthday, presumably with her family. The scene males Strike wonder "where he'd be if he lived to be eighty, and who'd be there with him."  We'll see much less happy outcomes later with Mucky Ricci and Betty Fuller. 

Troubled Blood, Chapters 15-20: From sexist colleagues to unwanted cards to flatulent witnesses.

"That's an excellent suggestion, Miss Triggs. 
Perhaps one of the men here would like to make it."

Part 3 sees Strike returning to Cornwall after Joan is hospitalized, leaving Robin in charge ot the agency. I think a lot of women in the workforce relate to her feeling of not being heard by her male colleagues. Thank goodness for Barclay having her back. 

"Of course, as Robin was well aware, she and Barclay had once gone digging for body, and such things create a bond."

And, of course, they'll get to go digging for a body at the end of this book, as well. It will be interesting if Kim Cochran is hired in The Hallmarked Man. For the first time, women would outnumber men at the team meetings. 

Troubled Blood, Chapters 9-14: From Robin's 29th to Margot's footsteps.

Chapter 9 opens with a melancholy Robin contemplating her 29th birthday, her failed marriage and her living situation, which, though nice, is a bit uncomfortable because of Max's moodiness. She also gets some less than impressive gifts from her brothers, none of which we ever see her use---  even the bubble bath she takes in Chapter 33 is described as "cheap jasmine-scented." Thankfully, her parents come through with a nice gift card for Selfridges. 

Unfortunately, she has to turn Strike down on his offer to co-interview Dr. Dinesh Gupta, because she is too professional to cancel the Weatherman's catch-up a second time. 

Beginning the Pre-THM re-read of Troubled Blood: Chapters 1-8

I am back from a wonderful trip to the Galapagos Islands and Peru, where I got to view amazing wildlife, scenery and ancient temples. Now back to my final re-read, Troubled Blood.   But. if you are a follower of Twitter Headers and want a real treat, check out this essay on the Strike and Ellacott files blog.  

This book, often considered the best-written of the series, is the only one save Lethal White (whose prologue completed the cliffhanger at Robin's Masham wedding) in which both our heroes start out outside of London. I must say, I always feel a bit guilty when I start this book, since going to Masham to meet Ted and Joan in person had been one of my top wishes. I didn't mean for Joan's cancer to be the impetus, though. 

It is also interesting to learn more about Dave Polworth here, who so far we have met only as a shark-bitten, daredevil diver who dislikes the Met and London "on principle." We learn here that his principles are informed by a strong sense of Cornish nationalism. We also get the delightful incongruity of this rough man of the sea quoting Anna Karenina when advising Strike about his love life. 

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. 

Mazankov, Krupov, and Polworth; an Unlikely Trio and the start of Troubled Blood

     Hello, Everyone! I will be starting our re-read of Troubled Blood for this and Thursday’s post. I have to say Troubled Blood has to be one of my favorites. It has everything you can want in a detective novel with the additional look at the trauma and healing moments that come from lives well lived without it feeling over the top. It is also a nice treat to have all of the epigraphs come from one place, Edmund Spencer’s “The Faire Queen.”

Chapter 1

This book begins in Cornwall on David Polworth’s 39th birthday and Strike is bored, maybe even slightly annoyed. Chum just can’t let go of the idea that the mostly peripatetic Strike would dare identify as anything other than Cornish. Strike notes two women by the bar and attempts to act distracted on his phone so as to avoid conversations about his Aunt Joan.  Funny enough it is Polworth's use of the nickname Diddy that softens Strikes’ mood towards him and honestly makes me a bit fond of him. He is, if nothing, a walking contradiction. He demands that Strike is Cornish by birth but says that “It’s identity- what you feel here” (4). He says Strike is Cornish but Diddy is from Didicoy, a Cornish word for gypsy. This brings about one of the few memories of Strike’s early childhood. He recalls meeting Dave who is described as being a “fighter whose viciousness was inversely proportional to his height” (6), and yet again he is fighting to defend the young boy with the funny name and accent. We are told that even though Joan is very ill, she insisted that Strike get a pint with Little Davey. And then comes one of my favorite lines by Polworth “Joanie reckons you’re gonna end up with your business partner. That Robin girl.” Strike attempts to  brush him off but apparently it is not just Joanie. Ted and Lucy also think Robin would be perfect for Strike. (Not to mention a very significant chunk of the readers of this series). Polworth tries to argue that Robin will leave eventually because she is a woman and so will want children and then gives a charming story about how a drunk man in a bar used Anna Karenina’s characters Mazankov, and Krupov to convince Polworth to ask Penny to marry him. In the charming fashion that is Dave Polworth he simply sums it up for Strike this way; “If you get married you can get regular blow jobs and sex without the hassle of trying to convince a girl to do you.” What a charmer! 

Chapter 2

Strike leaves the Victory, and we find out that Luke is an asshole. Like a major asshole. If I were Lucy he would have been grounded for breaking Strike’s headphones and would be made to buy a new pair and don’t even get me on stealing his prosthetic. Sorry… anyway we get some big dad energy in how Strike handles Luke and an adorable moment where he, with no examination, recognizes that when he is alone, bored, or low spirited he wants nothing more than to hear Robin’s voice. (someone get me smelling salts I may swoon). But before he can play, if I text her about this minor business detail, maybe she will call me game. He is interrupted by a woman we come to know as Anna Phipps.  Anna was told she would get a lead on her mother’s disappearance and when she saw Strike she couldn’t resist. Here is where we get the bare minimum of the case. Margot Bamborough left her medical practice in 1974 to visit a friend at a pub and was never seen again. Strike agrees to meet with them even though he feels like he shouldn’t  and does a brief google search. It seems Margot disappeared around the same time as serial killer Dennis Creed was murdering women and the DI who originally handled the case thought she was killed by him.