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…]
The Ink Black Heart: Random Comments and What I Liked.
September 11, 2022 by 14 Comments
This post is going to be a bit of a dumping ground for a few comments too brief to be worthy of their own posts. Just a few notes about some of my favorite bits of The Ink Black Heart.
- Pat! I thought she was amazing in this book and I am so glad Strike is finally liking and appreciating the quality of her work. Her shining moment was, of course, her detection of the package bomb and having the presence of mind to get away from it and seek safety behind Strike’s door. The remark about her uncle dying in an IRA bombing helped to remind us that the Troubles weren’t that long ago. I wonder if people like Pat, who were school age at the worst of the violence, were taught how to recognize bombs and what to do if they suspected one— the 1970’s equivalent to today’s active shooter drills in schools. Can any of our UK readers share any insights? And, we’ll have to add fruitcake to the menu of items to serve at our next Strike themed party (Doom Bar, red wine, creosote-colored tea, beef casserole, take-out curry, coffee-walnut cake and lots of chocolates). Note to self: seek out good British fruitcake recipe.
- Flavia! The best kid to come along since Jack— I’d be open to some matchmaking. You both love her for her intellect and curiosity while at the same time feel terrible for her with that awful family she’s stuck with. I can only hope that, with Daddy Dearest dead and her cynophobic brother off to jail, she’ll get that puppy. I think she’s earned it.
- Robin’s new flat! Like her, I’ll miss Wolfgang and I wish we had had a few more good talking scenes with Max before she moved, but I am glad she’s got her own digs at last. And Strike’s willingness to sleep on her sofa-bed? Oh. yeah! I can’t help but wonder what he looked like in those pajamas. I am visualizing blue stripes like Uncle Vernon’s.
- New staff (not Nutley)! Midge seems both confident and competent. I had expressed hope that she would arrive with a sexual orientation or relationship status that precluded any attraction between her and Strike, and I got my wish. I also like Dev and his alter-ego, Mr. Massoumi. I knew I’d like him once we saw he was too decent to work for Mitch Patterson, who, I strongly suspect , hired Morris to replace him. If so, Strike and Ellacott got the better half of that deal.
- The blessed event! I am very happy for Nick and Ilsa, but it appears that their marriage did indeed get permanently damaged by Nick’s reprehensible reaction to the last miscarriage.
- The missed kiss! I may be in the minority here, but I’m glad the kiss didn’t happen. Both were drunk, and Robin was a lot more impaired than Strike. It would have felt wrong for him to initiate something then, especially if it went further than kissing, and I think they would have regretted it.
- Henry! Not so much the kid himself, but the fact that Strike, contrary to his own expectations, could talk to him, and actually seemed to get on pretty well, or at least as well as any teenager is likely to get on with Mummy’s boyfriend.
- The anti-Kairos moment! I was so glad Strike realized, once and for all, that any residual affection for Milady Berzerko is gone; and, interestingly, it was her indifference to her children that finally seems to have snapped the last thread. Between this, Jack and Henry, we are getting indications that Strike could be a successful Daddy some day, after all. I am just really hoping it is not with Madeline.
That’s all for now. I hope to hear what other people especially liked.
Ink Black Heart: The Mythic Backdrop
September 10, 2022 by 18 Comments
I originally planned this ‘Mythic Backdrop’ post as one of the ‘placeholders’ to be put up at HogwartsProfessor while everyone finishes reading the book as a place for those who are already done to share their thoughts about key subjects (see the homepage Pillar Post column’s ‘Ink Black Heart Discussion‘ on the upper left for the collection of those conversation starters and insight collectors). I think now, though, that, while welcoming feedback and insights from Serious Strikers, I will file this on that page devoted to Strike6 discussion under ‘Analysis and Theories’ rather than ‘First Impressions.’
I do this because it seems more than credible to me that the reason Rowling-Galbraith switched the places of Troubled Blood and Ink Black Heart, a move that Louise Freeman’s literary detective work has made very hard to deny (see her brilliant compilation of the Strike6 evidence for the 5-6 Flip if that is news to you), is that the mythic backdrops of the Strike series, ‘Leda and the Swan’ and ‘Cupid and Psyche,’ all but require that the action and events of Ink Black Heart follow rather than precede Troubled Blood.
Join me after the jump for a review first of Rowling’s neo-mythological backdrops to her Strike series and then exposition of the Ink Black Heart events that make it the seamless continuation of what happened in Troubled Blood from the perspective of the myths in play. [Read more…]
Ink Black: Headless Hunt in Highgate?
September 7, 2022 by 5 Comments
I wrote in my pre-publication ‘Nine Guides to Ink Black Heart‘ that serious readers should be on the look out for ghosts haunting the sixth Strike novel. Fans of the Hogwarts Saga are used to crowds of departed souls appearing here and there, even enjoying some cranial polo on special occasions, but those who re-read the Strike series know the dead are ever present in these books as well:
You don’t hear so much about the ghosts of Cormoran Strike, though, right? Which is a shame. Ghosts are a big deal in these mysteries and are all but certain to play a role just out of sight in Ink Black Heart. In addition to The Ghosts Haunting Troubled Blood, see Louise Freeman’s posts on the Ghost of Charlie Bristow in Cuckoo’s Calling and the Ghost of Freddie Chiswell in Lethal White. I have to think the cartoonist that is murdered in a cemetery will be haunting the investigation of her death — and inspiring the detectives with a nudge here and there. Given the meaning of Vanessa Ekwenzi’s first name vis a vis Nabokov (the “black Vanessa” butterfly), I’ll be especially attentive to her inputs if any on this case.
The text within the text, after all, is set in a graveyard, and an especially spooky one at that. Of course there will be ghosts…
Well, it was nothing like Troubled Blood with its persistent references to Margot Bamborough’s thoughts and the perceptions of the Creed victims pictured on the cover of The Demon of Paradise Park. And Vanessa and the Nabokovia butterflies were absent, full stop. I expect she and Oliver wed during the months of Ink Black Heart and will re-appear in Strike7 or 8 with a child or two — which, with Ilsa and Nick’s baby (and Strike and Madeline’s?), will ramp up the Murphy-Ellacott possibilities, naturally.
But ghosts? I found this one tease that makes believe there are many more I missed on my first reading. The first thing said at the gathering in the Artists Club of the Strike Agency partners and Maverick Films’ Richard Elgar, Grant and Heather Ledwell, and the agent, Allan Yeoman, is Yeoman’s belief that “I know Edie would be glad we’re meeting” (157). That may seem to be a throw-away for tossers to break the ice, but has been a commonplace in the previous Strike novels for invoking or noting the presence, wishes, and even activity of the dead; review Greg Talbot’s repeated references to his father’s hopes and influence on events in the revived investigation of Bamborough’s disappearance.
The subject for discussion, then, is what signs have you seen (or heard) in your experiences of Ink Black Heart of supernatural influence? What wild and wacky coincidences that favor the revelation of the guilty parties happen are there in Strike6 which may suggest ghosts on the move, manipulating the ether and the thoughts of the living to act out their revenge?
Ink Black: Has Strike Conceived a Child?
September 6, 2022 by 11 Comments
Yesterday, Louise Freeman laid out the compelling evidence that Troubled Blood was originally meant to be Strike6 and Ink Black Heart Strike5. Using Ring Theory, Literary Alchemy, and the Parallel Series Idea in addition to her own detailed timeline, she offered the cogent argument that, for whatever reason, Rowling decided to switch the two. Speculation has already begun about why she might have shifted the two.
This morning Serious Striker J. S. Malekson offered a plot possibility that would make flipping Strike novels 5 and 6 almost a necessity and bring the Rokeby drama back into clear focus: Strike’s dalliance with Madeline in Ink Black Heart has resulted in her pregnancy.
Along the lines of things that were expected to happen in Strike 6 that didn’t happen, a thought struck me that something was going to happen in Strike 6 that had never occurred to me before Strike 6: Madeline becomes pregnant with Strike’s baby.
Recent Conversation