As we embark on the next-to-last part of Troubled Blood, let’s take a closer look at some of the wonderful Spenserian elements woven throughout chapters 60-71. I know you speedy readers who beat me to the end of the novel may not have been stopping to admire the 
literary scenery along the way as we raced to our thrilling conclusion and the final unmasking of guilty parties. I’ll require a few more reads myself to catch the majority of our clever author’s well-woven threads taken from Edmund Spenser’s loom, and I doubt anyone could catch them all, but I hope I’ll give you plenty to think about as we admire the artistry of the novel as well as its source. This installment will take us right up to the end of Part Six, so if you haven’t gotten there yet, no peeking! All the spoilers are after the jump, so come along with me to continue our exploration into how The Faerie Queene and Troubled Blood are as intertwined as the trees in one of Spenser’s forests.
This sixth section of Troubled Blood is action-packed, like most of the knights’ adventures in The Faerie Queene, but let’s take a look at six powerful connections between the Detectives of Denmark Street and the Knights of Gloriana, the Faerie Queene.
As we head around the bend toward the back of the novel and the back of the year, the closing of the mystery and of the timespan that is clearly our stage, it’s time to take a peek at some of the best Faerie Queene cues in Part Five. If you haven’t caught up to our thoughts on Troubled Blood so far, there is time, so check out our Hogwarts Professor takes on a wide variety of angles for this novel so far. I’m having a grand time keeping the Spenser score running, looking at ways in which our intrepid detectives are mirroring elements of The Faerie Queene, and I hope you’re having as much fun as we are! Follow me after the jump for five Faerie Queene take-aways from Part Five! Remember, spoilers galore, so stop here if you need to get past chapter 59! 
Apologies for the late post today! With these hefty readings, I’m falling behind nearly as much as my students, but I dare say I’m having more fun with my reading than they are with theirs! I hope you’re enjoying the threads we’ve thus far discovered that tie Troubled Blood to its literary inspiration, Edmund Spenser’s epic Faerie Queene. If you have not been following along with our multi-faceted coverage of the new Cormoran Strike novel, I hope you’ll catch up, and then I hope you’ll come with me after the jump as we enter the next season, both literally and figuratively, in the latest installments of the adventures of our modern-day knights Artegall and Britomart, Strike and Robin.
writes book series that hold up under multiple reads, with new treasures revealed each time.
that the only reason it wasn’t as popular as the Lord of the Rings was because of Spenser’s use of Chaucerian language, a feature that makes him seem far more ancient than his contemporaries, like William Shakespeare. With the horrible monsters, the beautiful ladies, and the constantly battling knights (one of whom is also in the aforementioned group of beautiful ladies), it’s a recipe for blockbuster gold, so I’m thrilled to see how Galbraith/Rowling is taking Spenser’s epic as her scaffold for Troubled Blood. Beyond the epigraphs that begin each chapter and section, she has also woven in beautiful connections to the allegorical adventures of Spenser’s knights. Join me after the jump for observations on Faerie Queene connections in part 2 of Troubled Blood. We’ll be spoiler-free up until page 153, so if you aren’t there yet, catch up, and join us for an initial look into our Spenser-flavored mystery!
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