Early on 7 September, the seventh Cormoran Strike-Robin Ellacott novel, Running Grave, was given its second running start for readers who cannot wait for its full publication in 19 days. Unlike the first excerpt released on Amazon via the book-page’s ‘Look Inside’ feature, this one includes the full opening epigraphs (Hello, Dylan Thomas!), the complete table of contents — a Prologue, Nine Parts, and an Epilogue — and, remarkably, five more chapters, the first eleven of the nineteen in Part One.
You can read it via this link.
A HogwartsProfessor.Substack.com reader and Serious Striker, PercyL, shared this information on a comment thread there following my post about the Amazon release, an initial and briefer excerpt that disappeared without explanation several days after its equally mysterious appearance. I expected this new release to be old news by the time I finished work late yesterday, but only TheRowlingLibrary had reported it and even that announcement was via a re-tweet without comment. I cannot tell if the usual klaxon-horn voices in Strike fandom and social media are blissfully unaware of the release or studiously avoiding its discussion; even more bizarre for such a drop, none of the wire services or search engines I have checked are carrying news of the new excerpt on Apple.
I will be writing about the second excerpt later today on the Substack HogwartsProfessor site for subscribers (it’s free!) and I’m hoping that Elizabeth Baird-Hardy will share some of her first thoughts here. There will, of course, be spoiler alerts for those who want to know nothing about Running Grave before it is officially published on 26 September.
One bon mot, though, safe even for those who do not want to hear any plot points or speculation derived from the opening chapters: in offering eleven of the Part One’s nineteen chapters, Galbraith has shared the Part One ‘turn’ in chapter ten and the first turtleback lines between chapters nine and eleven. That turn’s pivotal moment is a remarkable pointer to what will be the primary reveal or twist in the novel’s last Part and about Strike’s essential transformation. Strike 7 promises to have its rings within rings…
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