If you haven’t read the twitter responses that followed Kurt’s challenge to rank the six Strike novels now in print, please do. None of them, due to the medium, share the reasoning behind the rankings, but one did note that her ranking was based on whether the axiological measure was “for the murder case” or “for S&R’s relationship and personal life storylines,” justifying two lists by saying “I find it almost impossible to rank them otherwise.”

I think this tweeter is right in noting that the criteria is all important in this kind of ranking and that most readers will rank the stories best to worst based on the quality of each mystery, the quantity of romance and personal history-life drops, or both. As a contrarian and supposed Subject Matter Expert, I’m going to pretend the zip-factor of the narrative misdirection and the amount of ‘shipping and back-story material, with one exception, is not that important in assessing which is the best, the worst, and the middling in this series.

What matters instead, I suggest for your consideration, is the depth of the artistry, of the meaning, and of reader engagement, in brief, a ranking of the novels with respect to which deliver the most and the least anagogical material and archetypal experience in their structure, symbolism, and mythological content. In which Strike novels is Rowling-Galbraith at the top of her game, in other words, and when is she just calling it in, relatively speaking?

I have not read Kurt’s post on this subject yet, tempting as that is, lest his brilliance discourage me from doing anything more than writing “like he said!” I apologize in advance if that self-blinding means this post covers the same ground as the Submariner’s. If the clues he dropped in the thread and the choices of his dinner guests are any hint, there shouldn’t be much overlap in our rankings. Join me after the jump for my contribution to this rankings-with-reasoning HogwartsProfessor series. [Read more…]

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Following from Prof Groves Valentine’s post, Kurt Schreyer, Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Missouri, and author of Shakespeare’s Medieval Craft: Remnants of the Mysteries on the London Stage has written a Hogwarts Professor Guest Post – Parsifal, Strike, & “Le noir roc courroucé”. Join me after the jump to find out more about the enigmatic (and visually striking) Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine.

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Three Cheers for the sleuths at The Rowling Library!

DV, we’ll soon have the citation from the I Ching and the translation Rowling-Galbraith is using.

Until then, your thoughts? That I Ching piece is suggestive, beyond the Norfolk Commune.

Did Shanker kill Leda or promise, at least, that he wouldn’t say why she committed suicide?