Running Grave: The Ghosts

Running Grave Placeholder Post, Number Five!

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. It’s a community gathering place — and it creates a record of findings for topics that otherwise become hopelessly jumbled. The seven I am posting for Running Grave are:

Why ‘Ghosts’? Because Rowling-Galbraith, a la favorite author Nabokov and her own oft-repeated beliefs about the immortal soul, goes to some pains to populate her stories with shades of persons-past. In Harry Potter, the ghosts were comic (for the most part!), visible, and all but ubiquitous around Hogwarts. In Cormoran Strike, the shading is much more subtle but at least as important. See my ‘The Ghosts Haunting Troubled Blood‘ for an introduction to this subject and Louise Freeman’s subsequent posts about the specters just out of sight in Cuckoo’s Calling and in Lethal White,

Ghosts promise to be at least as big a deal in Running Grave; the excerpts of the first eleven chapters released and then recaptured pre-publication make this a surety. Beside the ghosts called down by or conjured up by the religious cultists, though, what evidence do you see of, say, Leda Strike’s influence from beyond the veil? Aunt Joan? Have at it in the comment boxes below!

Running Grave: Lethal White Parallels

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:

As I explained in the Cuckoo’s Calling place-holder postRunning 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!

Running Grave: Cuckoo’s Calling Links

It’s something of a Publication Week tradition here at HogwartsProfessor to provide the online space for Serious Strikers to share their discoveries as they find them, an alocal place for specific topics we explore here. The seven I am posting for Running Grave are:

‘Gaffes’ are first because everyone is shocked (and excited?) to find a mistake that Team Rowling missed in their editorial and continuity checks. ‘Deathly Hallows Echoes’ come next because of the fun to be had tracing Rowling’s playful Parallel Series efforts. The next two subjects are more involved because they require some understanding of Rowling’s ring writing (see the Ring Composition Pillar Post for an in depth look at the subject).

In brief, though Rowling has said repeatedly that her Strike novels are not a seven book series, they sure act like one, by which I mean, we find the same relation between books in her mysteries that we found in the Hogwarts Saga — namely, a story turn that echoes the beginning and parallels between books 2 and 6 and between 3 and 5.

This being the case, the last two elements of as seven book ring — the latch between the first and last books and the pointers in the fourth book, the turn, to the last book — should appear in Strike 7, series finale or not. Deathly Hallows had close to fifty fairly obvious echoes of Philosopher’s Stone and there were significant Goblet of Fire parallels as well (see Harry Potter as Ring Composition and Ring Cycle for all that).

So.

Please share in the comment boxes below the echoes you heard of Cuckoo’s Calling while reading Running Grave. Is there a faked suicide committed by a family member? Do we encounter characters from the first book in the seventh who are acting much as they were in Strike1 or in completely opposite mirror images of their earlier behavior? The floor is yours!

Running Grave: Deathly Hallows Echoes

It’s something of a Publication Week tradition here at HogwartsProfessor to put up posts for Serious Strikers to write up their discoveries as they find them, an alocal place for specific topics we explore here. The seven I am posting for Running Grave are:

‘Gaffes’ heads the list because it is the subject that generates the most reader responses. I include the Deathly Hallows parallels at #2 because the Parallel Series Idea — the theory that Rowling has been writing the Strike-Ellacott novels in playful echo of their apposite numbers in the Harry Potter series — has become such a focus of predictions and conversations here and elsewhere. (See the ‘Parallel Series Idea’ Pillar Post for the collection of evidence for the first six books.)

So, did Polworth die like Dobby did in Deathly Hallows as I predicted he would? Let us know the Strike-Potter Book Seven links you see in the comment boxes below!

Running Grave: The Gaffes

It is a feature of HogwartsProfessor.com to post seven open threads on the day a Rowling-Galbraith novel is published, thereby creating spaces for readers to comment as they make their way through the new book about a variety of topics close to our hearts.

The seven I am posting for Running Grave are:

Of these, I place ‘The Gaffes’ in the lead position because it has generated by far the most responses in the past. (Check out the Gaffes posts for Lethal White, Troubled Blood , and Ink Black Heart if you doubt me on that score.) In the two previews we were given — Rowling, Inc’s greatest gaffe jamboree to date, both having to be pulled promptly after publication — the chapters given included several mistakes that readers have noted.

So, have it in the comment boxes below! This shouldn’t need to be said, but of course those concerned about spoilers should not read this thread.