Two days ago I posted an overview of the True Book’s appearances in Troubled Blood after writing up my working hypothesis, several corollaries to that idea, and the premises of my argument. That post was meant to preface a series of explorations of each of the seven mentions and illustrations we get of the True Book in Strike5; I suspect this series is best read in sequence but can be started at any point with other parts easily referred to if the reader wants more information. 

Today’s post is a close-up look at the first mention of this text, the fragment of Pitman shorthand that DI Bill Talbot left in the Metropolitan Police Bamborough case file that mentions the True Book. Cormoran shares it with Robin at the end of their Clerkenwell walk in conversation about this file on Halloween in the Three Kings Pub. It looks like this (Part 2, chapter 14, page 149):

Almost everything about the walk and consequent conversation in the last chapters of Part 2 are pointers to the revelations of Whodunnit at the end of Part 6 and Troubled Blood in general; Robin discusses the phone boxes, there’s a plastic nurse, the costume party backdrop in the pub with its Nativity associated name hints of the book-to-come’s occult touches and Christian backdrop. Oakden’s note about the Cross being the place to dig, the last piece from the file Strike shows Robin in the pub, is important in this regard with respect to how to interpret the prevalent cross symbolism in the text, a subject for a future post.

The Pitman shorthand note, however, is, as the first of seven passages and illustrations taken from the True Book, the natural key to its interpretation. It may even be a key to how to read Rowling’s work as a whole. For all that, join me after the jump for my attempt to answer four questions about this ‘note in a bottle,’ I mean, in a police file. [Read more…]

As promised last Saturday, I hope in the weeks prior to Ink Black Heart‘s publication to write an introductory review of the ‘True Book’ pages Rowling inserted into Troubled Blood. There are several glaring gaps even after two years spent discussing The Presence’s longest and most challenging novel; the most egregious fail is the absence of serious exploration of the book’s most unique quality, which is to say, the author-illustrated pages of its primary embedded text.

Today’s post is an overview of the series to follow in which I will take a closer look at each of these pages; I call this an “introductory review” because my primary aim is not writing anything definitive but to foster discussion of Bill Talbot’s True Book and Rowling’s purpose in deploying it the way she has.

Let’s start with my working hypothesis, several corollary ideas, and my argument’s three premises. [Read more…]

🎧 What do you think about Strike and his aversion to getting romantically involved with Robin?
🎧 Has the interview with Oonagh revealed anything you find interesting? Have you changed your mind about any of the suspects?

— Robert Galbraith (@RGalbraith) July 30, 2022

Robert Galbraith’s twitter feed is sponsoring a ‘Listen Along’ for new readers of Troubled Blood. Last Saturday they posted two questions about the novels first fourteen chapters, Parts 1 and 2 of seven, and today, as you can see above, they’ve put up two more, these about chapters 15 to 27. That’s a bit of a weird break, as Part 3 closes at chapter 30, but I guess they have plans for a set of Christmas-themed questions for week three in this series.

If the aim was to generate online conversation among new listeners, the project in its first week was a fail. I was the only person who tweeted a response to their questions and my notes there were for re-readers to come join the conversation here about Troubled Blood‘s first two Parts. That pitch, it seems, and my seven posts here last week about Strike 5’s first fourteen chapters were also a failure, at least with respect to generating conversation; only one reader shared her thoughts about what I was writing all week.

I’ve decided, consequently, not to continue my chapter by chapter review of Troubled Blood, as much as I enjoyed writing those posts. @RGalbraith may have to continue playing a losing hand, but I can move on to more fruitful use of my time here. I realized last night while writing up some thoughts on Talbot’s ‘True Book’ that this bizzarro embedded text is the single most neglected aspect of Rowling-Galbraith’s longest novel and that, if I’m going to explore its depths and various meanings, I’d best do it before Ink Black Heart is upon us, a publication date only one month away.

My working premises for a reading of Talbot’s True Book as I begin are that (1) the book is indeed Rowling’s ‘True Book,’ her covert message about what happened top Margot Bamborough and who killed her, (2) Talbot’s tarot card spreads, the visible Celtic Cross lay-out and the three card spreads hidden in the various illustrations, are not random but Rowling’s deliberate choices to convey her meaning, and (3), in contrast, the astrological chart drawn for the moment and place of Bamborough’s disappearance, guided the choice of star signs for characters and their relationship. This last point is an especially difficult one to grasp or believe, I know, but the alternative, that she wrote the book and then found a time and place to match her story is preposterous.

So, next week, a close look at Rowling’s illustrated True Book inside Troubled Blood, an embedded text that may be The Presence’s most successfully covert bit of writing, a book within the book the characters struggle to understand but the readers of Strike 5 have thus far accepted at face value or at the level of Strike and Robin’s readings. I hope you’ll join me in Trelawney’s classroom for a reading of Rowling’s tarot card spreads and riffs on the Crowley-inspired deck illustrations!