A Few Shiny Thoughts on The Hallmarked Man

I’ve at last finished my first read through and started my targeted read-back through of the latest installment in J.K Rowling’s Strike series. We’ll be doing some serious deep dives into this volume, of course,  but I wanted to go ahead and share some of my initial thoughts which may, for some of you, be similar to your own. Just in case you are reading this post before completing your own complete read of the twisting tale of silver, murder, and convoluted relationships galore, I am splitting my Top Ten Initial Thoughts into Spoiler Free and Spoiler-Rife, so if you prefer to solve the mysteries alongside our Denmark Street detectives, you’ll want to stop at number four!

1. The first of ten thoughts—Ten!

I am always fascinated by number patterns, particularly in Rowling’s work, and not just because I have spent a great deal of time in Panem lately, a world Suzanne Collins meticulously lines with number symbolism. We are used to Rowling and her care with numbers from the Hogwarts adventures, and she has continued that attention to symbolic and literal numbering in the Strike books. In this installment, one of the first things I noticed with interest was the use of the number 10. Before the end of the first chapter, our first non-series character is introduced, Decima Mullins. Her name, with its Latin root of “ten,”  sets up the use of ten throughout. The book is broken in 10 segments of varying length, plus an epilogue. Other tens crop up as well. Since Rowling has made it clear that she plans for a ten-book series, the use of tens certainly reinforces that. Knowing that only two more books remain places added emphasis on the events of this one. It also reminds us of the ten-year age gap between Strike and Robin, which continues to cause him stress, but which we are hoping to see overcome by the time the series, like this book, counts to ten.

2. A shorter time span

Some of the novels in the series have spanned long periods, and my personal favorite, Troubled Blood, covers a full year, not to mention the fact that it provides closure for a decades-old cold case. The Hallmarked Man deals with a murder that actually took place during the middle of the events of the previous book, The Running Grave.  The stretch of time covered in this novel is relatively brief, just a few months, but, interestingly, it is a span of time that stretches between Strike’s birthday and Ryan Murphy’s. As Robin continues to be pulled between the two of them, that time span is highly appropriate, but it is also brief, reminding us that the series is winding down. The novel ends in early 2017, with an actual March 2017 historical event as a marker, and Rowling has promised she isn’t doing a “Covid book” (thank goodness!), so that leaves just under two years for the next two installments.

2. Famous opening words

I always love the Galbraith/Rowling epigraphs. My favorites are those in Troubled Blood because I well know the text from which they all come: Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. Some of the other volumes, with less familiar sources for the passages that open sections and chapters, resonate less powerfully for me, personally. As always, I wonder if Rowling has a full-time quotation finder-and-placer on her personal staff, as the choices in this volume are both appropriate and fairly obscure. She uses a variety of quotations from some familiar poets: Robert Browning, A.E. Housman, and Matthew Arnold. Interestingly, these quotations primarily come from lesser known of these authors’ works. Having taught “My Last Duchess,” every semester for the past thirty years, I do spend a good bit of time with Browning, but that poem is not among those used to open the chapters of The Hallmarked Man, and I enjoyed seeing so many of his less well-known pieces. Also included are quotations from a 1910 novel, The Maid of the Silver Sea, written by John Oxenham, which, appropriately, is set on the island of Sark which also figures in The Hallmarked Man, and it features a family with secrets and conflicts similar to those that are woven throughout our latest Strike adventure. The remaining epigraphs originate from Albert Pike’s Liturgy of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. Pike, who has been in the news lately with his Washington, D.C. statue being re-installed, was, in addition to being vital to Freemasonry in America, a Confederate general of some renown, so I have spent time with him through studying the American Civil War. I honestly never expected him to turn up in a Strike novel. All of these quotations, as usual, bear analysis and further study.

4. The Goldfish

It’s no secret that we love literary alchemy here at Hogwarts Professor, and Rowling always gives us wonderful material to discuss. In this volume, the unlikely presence of a fish tank adds a new way to bring in the elements of literary alchemy. What seems like a joke, Pat bringing in a fishtank after being scooped by another family member who gifts her great-grandaughter with one first, becomes an interesting motif, partly because Pat names the lumpy black fish Cormoran and the golden one Robin. I honestly expect to see more of these rascals, who are more than mere office décor.

SPOILERS Ahead!

5. Silkworm Echoes

When I rank these books in order of my favorites, I almost always put The Silkworm at the bottom. The books are all wonderful in 

their own ways, of course, but that one, for me, is less fun. In many ways, this novel mirrors Silkworm, just as The Running Grave mirrors Career of Evil and Ink-Black Heart mirrors Lethal White. If, as I suspect, the next novel will mirror Cuckoo’s Calling and the last one will serve as a sort of epilogue, it makes perfect sense that book eight lines up with book two, and, just in case we miss that, we get a cameo from Nina Lascelles, whom we haven’t seen since then.

6. Returning cast.

It isn’t only The Silkworm cast that returns in The Hallmarked Man (although I must say I am disappointed we have not yet had a return of Orlando, who seems a likely character for our detectives to check on, even years later), We also get to have folks like Eric Wardle return and fill out their stories, and even Strike’s one-night-stand from Cuckoo’s Calling, Ciara Porter, makes a brief appearance. I’m hopeful that Rowling, with her characteristic use of vast arrays of characters who often recur years later, will bring back some of the others we haven’t seen in a while.

7. Strike’s decision

With three of the returning characters being women with whom Strike has carried on to some degree or another, we are reminded that he has had a string of liaisons over the last seven years. Now, however, it seems he has gotten his priorities in order and finally realizes that finding substitutes for the woman he really wants and needs is not working. If, as I suspect, his wandering days are over and he is committed to Robin in hopes she will reciprocate on the other end of our cliffhanger ending, Robin would be the seventh of his partners after Charlotte. If Robin does reciprocate and doesn’t marry Ryan ****Murphy, Strike would be her third partner. Rowling loves threes and sevens. And when we add them together, we get ten.

8. The really important piece of silver—the charm bracelet

When the title of the book was released, a friend of mine, in hopes I might become fluent in antique silver,  had recently gifted me with a book about hallmarks, which I was ready to consult…and didn’t need to. I don’t know if other readers agree, but, in the midst of all the silver in this book, most of which is a red herring, and none of which required my handy hallmark book or much knowledge about Masons, honestly, one piece of silver really is important: the bracelet Strike gives Robin for Christmas. In contrast to the opal earrings that Murphy gives her (lovely, practical, match her necklace), the charm bracelet tells a story, a story we as readers have watched unfold. It’s clunky, with the seven mismatched charms that commemorate moments of their lives together, but it’s real, and incredibly thoughtful. Even with its messy packaging (Cormoran Strike and I wrap presents using the same technique), it is the most valuable present Robin receives, and although she does not wear that bracelet during this book, I predict that putting it on and wearing it will be a milestone moment for her in the future. I also love how she opens that package in the last chapter of part three, and the bracelet has seven charms. Ten strikes again.

9. Convoluted murder

With all the twists and turns in the lives of our detectives, one could almost forget there is some actual detective work taking place here. There is plenty of drama not related to work, even beyond the on-going drama of Robin and Strike.  I was particularly delighted with Cormoran finally talking to Rokeby. With Uncle Ted’s death in the first few pages and thus the loss of his surrogate father, it makes sense that Strike is making a connection with his biological one. But the family mess that winds around the murder and all the possible men who might be the body in the silver vault is even more convoluted, and sometimes, it is hard to follow. The story of Rupert, whom Decima Mullins is convinced is the vault victim, is strange, but not the most complicated story here (I suspected early on that his sudden departure had this reasoning, but little Lion seems to have more going for him than many children, all things considered). Most of what I have had to carefully re-read is in order to understand the bizarre plot that leads to the death of that man in vault. Along the way, numerous other mysteries are solved and wrongs righted, but the story of the person who really is in that vault is probably the most confusing of the lot. That layer of confusion is cited as reason for the killer’s mistakes that lead to a resolution, but it is occasionally cause for reader confusion, too!

10. That Epilogue!                                                                                                   

But really, the identity of the Hallmarked Man, the fates of all the men who are proposed as possible candidates for his true identity, and the various cases being handled by the agency all take a backseat to that epilogue. Like that great scene at the end of Troubled Blood, the events on the novel’s last few pages may ripple outwards into our next book. In fact, we can hope that, as Robin heads to the Ritz, as she and Strike did on her birthday two years previously, that she will have a revelation that will lead her to reject Murphy and choose Strike. His bizarre proclamation and proposal take place in a strange setting, on the stairs outside the office, but a perfect one; it’s the place where they met, where a temp job, a bad step, and a sudden grab led to a powerful friendship and business partnership that may, at last, evolve into something more. This cliffhanger ending may leave all of us waiting much longer than poor Cormoran for an answer, and with Rowling’s hints with Cupid and Psyche, there may be more waiting and separation to come.

 

I look forward to your thoughts! Are these elements that you found intriguing? Were there others? I also look forward deep dives in the days to come!