It’s something of a Publication Week tradition here at HogwartsProfessor to provide an online space for Serious Strikers to share their discoveries as they find them, an alocal place for specific topics we have explored here in the past. The seven I am posting for Running Grave are:
- The Gaffes
- Deathly Hallows Parallels
- Cuckoo’s Calling Parallels
- Lethal White Parallels
- The Ghosts
- Literary Alchemy
- The Occult
As I explained in the Cuckoo’s Calling place-holder post, Running Grave should have significant echoing of the fourth book in the series, Lethal White, because thus far the six books have shown the qualities of a seven book ring cycle. Lethal White’s mysterious ‘Part Two’ page, too, being followed as it was by a near step by step retelling of the John Bristoe opening of Calling, points to that book as the story turn whose ending-echo will be found in Strike7, the closing part of the cycle (see ‘The Missing Page Mystery‘ and ‘The Missing Page Mystery, Part Two‘).
Does Running Grave feature another suicide staged by a jealous or angry family member — or a suicide that was staged by the dead person to seem to have been staged? Will we get Rosmersholm echoing with an incest revelation and a herd of spectral White Horses? What made you think, ‘Oh, this is just like Lethal White!’ as you were reading? Share your findings in the comment boxes below!
The agency’s involvement with both cases begins with the problems of a neurodivergent person named William. Both Williams are searching for truth and both are extremely confused about what is real. In Lethal White, Strike helps Billy Knight identify the truth, while in Running Grave, Robin helps Will to understand what is true. I’m interested to know what JKR might intend us to make of this parallel. Certainly the importance of distinguishing truth from lies and confusion, as well as the point that people can be crazy/ poor thinkers and still have some grasp of the truth, just as people can be highly intelligent and completely mistaken. Billy Knight, a boy whose mother died and whose father was terrible, makes me think of Switch, while Will Edensor, who fails to return home dispite his mother’s dying wish, seems like a reflection of Helena Ravenclaw. Since Helen is the child of Leda and Zeus, I wonder if the character of Will also hints at some issues we will find with Switch — maybe when we meet Switch, he will be searching for truth.