• Rowling Asked About Parallel Series Idea

    ByJohn
    3 Comments

    The Rowling Library earlier this week published an article by Oxford Research Fellow Beatrice Groves called ‘Harry Potter and the Ink Black Prince.’ In it she discussed Rowling’s latest novel, The Ink Black Heart, in light of the Parallel Series Idea (PSI), a theory discussed here beginning in 2014 that argues Rowling-Galbraith is writing the Strike series as deliberate echoes of her Harry Potter novels. You can read about these playful parallels and echoing between each of the first six Strike mysteries at the HogwartsProfessor Pillar Post on the subject and the page on the Heart-Prince touches.

    More after the jump about PSI and the question posed to Rowling about whether it is a valid theory.

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  • Ink Black Heart: Does Rowling Tip Her Hand About the Killer with a Hermes Reference and ‘Prince’ Parallels?

    ByEvan Willis
    3 Comments

    Evan Willis is a HogwartsProfessor faculty member with a special expertise in Rowling’s hermetic artistry. He was in communication with me throughout his first-reading of Ink Black Heart so I can testify that the journey he describes below is not something he made up after the fact. His long-awaited write-up of his thoughts on Strike6 exceeds even my very high expectations and it establishes I think his theory that Mercury markers are keys to Identifying Rowling murder mystery killers; enjoy! — John

    Hours after it came out, I started on Ink Black Heart. I wanted to read it slowly so that I had adequate opportunity to test, theorize, and predict, and so only got to the end of it early this week. I sent off a couple comments and e-mails as I read indicating where my line of reasoning had gone so that I might document my testing, while trying my best to avoid spoilers (this site, along with Twitter, became very dangerous to go anywhere near).

    My conclusions? That our parallel series idea still has deep predictive and explanatory power (Half-Blood Prince parallels are extraordinarily strong here), that the important Half-Blood Prince references are where it connected back to Philosopher’s Stone (pointing to a 1-6 connectivity in both series), and that Rowling has subtly indicated the identity of the killer in each of these novels very early on by inclusion of a passing reference to a mythological character with direct ties to the figure of Hermes in the near vicinity of their first appearance.

    Join me after the jump for discussion of how I arrived at all three of these conclusions — and how I just missed identifying the killer before Strike and Robin did.

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  • The Ink Black Heart: Parallels to The Cuckoo’s Calling.

    ByLouise Freeman
    4 Comments

    As John has pointed out, there are expected Book 1- Book 5 parallels in the Harry Potter series. As such, we went looking for connections between The Cuckoo’s Calling and Troubled Blood. But, with 5-6 flip, we ought to expect some connections between CC and The Ink Black Heart as well as between IBH and CoE,  Do we find them?

    A few I can think of:

    1. The murder victim is a female former foster child who earned a large amount of money at a young age (Lula through her modeling career, Edie through the cartoon). Both were on the verge of signing a lucrative new contract when they died.
    2. Both murder victims had money-grubbing uncles who wanted little to do with their niece until the niece got rich.
    3. Both murder victims had druggie boyfriends with whom they had recently broken up (Evan Duffield, Josh Blay).
    4. The murderer had responsibilities for a seriously ill parent.
    5. A child-related conflict destroys Strike’s love for Charlotte (anger over the lies about her alleged pregnancy (or abortion or miscarriage?) in CC; unwillingness to protect the twins from Jago in IBH.)
    6. A victim’s missing cell phone is an important clue to the case.

    What others can our readers come up with?

  • ‘Harry Potter and the Ink Black Prince:’ Beatrice Groves on a Parallel Series Idea

    ByJohn
    0 Comments

    The feature story in this month’s Rowling Library pdf is ‘The Ink Black Prince: Connections between The Ink Black Heart and Harry Potter‘ by Beatrice Groves. You can download the issue here or read it online using this link. Scroll to page 14 for the discussion of Ink Black Heart‘s echoes and parallels with it’s apposite number in the Hogwarts Saga, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

    The article has all the signature virtues of Prof Groves’ writing: a magisterial command of Rowling canon and interview material, discoveries consequent to her research into the meaning of words and names, and a tone and spirit that is simultaneously welcoming and challenging. Prepare yourself for a treat; only Prof Groves could have written such an insightful review so quickly after reading this epic-length novel (compare it to anything available from professional book-mavens in print and online for an even better appreciation of her accomplishment).

    If the Parallel Series Idea, the theory that Rowling is writing the Cormoran Strike novels with heavy shading in each from her first seven book series, and Ring Composition in Harry Potter and the Strike novels, which structural points inform much of Prof Groves’ discussion, see the following pages here at HogwartsProfessor.com: Read More “‘Harry Potter and the Ink Black Prince:’ Beatrice Groves on a Parallel Series Idea”

  • Anne Rowling, Queen Elizabeth, and Honors at Buckingham Palace

    ByJohn
    1 Comment

    Rowling said in this 2018 interview with the cast of ‘Crimes of Grindelwald’ on the ‘Today Show’ that her late mother Anne Volant Rowling, if she had lived to see it, would have been over the moon about her daughter receiving honors at Buckingham Palace. Nick Jeffery wrote a beautiful review of the times Rowling has brushed up against royalty through the years, ‘J. K. Rowling and the Queen;’ what I think the interview segment above highlights about those contacts is how much the Royal Family acts as a shared reference, the almost supernatural or extra-temporal pinnacle of the societal hierarchy, for everyone in the UK, to include those who despise the monarchy as a Medieval relic. Read More “Anne Rowling, Queen Elizabeth, and Honors at Buckingham Palace”