• True Book 1: The Pitman Fragment

    ByJohn
    1 Comment

    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 “True Book 1: The Pitman Fragment”

  • The ‘True Book’ in Troubled Blood: Hypothesis, Premises, and Overview

    ByJohn
    3 Comments

    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 “The ‘True Book’ in Troubled Blood: Hypothesis, Premises, and Overview”

  • Placeholder Post: Cormoran Strike Errors Corrected In Later Editions

    ByLouise Freeman
    6 Comments

    As the Cormoran Strike series grows in length, complexity and number of readers, more and more errors are noticed by sharp-eyed fans. Just as with Harry Potter, some of those errors are being corrected in later editions.

    This post is being compiled to both collect all Hogpro posts on book errors we have found, and as a place to report any corrections or changes readers spy in later editions. Please list in the comments sections.

    MISTAKES: 

    1. Errors first noted in Cuckoo’s Calling.
    2. Errors from Lethal White.
    3. Errors from Troubled Blood. 
    4. The life and times of Donald Laing gets its own post. 
    5. Rowling/Galbraith is not good with dates. 
    6. I mean, really, really not good. 

     

    CORRECTIONS:

    1. The most elaborate (and probably least necessary, since the will was still invalid!) correction was the addition of Aussie-Vashti-Saleswoman Mia Thompson to The Cuckoo’s Calling. This was the most elaborate correction seen in Ms. Rowling’s work to date, requiring the addition of a new named character and edits of multiple chapters.

    2. One error caught quite early, and therefore present in only the first printing of Troubled Blood, was a continuity error when Strike and Robin were enjoying fish and chips in Skegness. Strike discovered he was out of cigarettes. He suggests buying some. Then, Robin is surprised by Gloria Conti’s message.  After their exchange on this topic, Strike “lights himself another cigarette.” Then, a mere few lines later, they “set off in search of cigarettes.”  This error was fixed in later editions of the hardback, the audiobook and the paperback.

    3. The TB audiobook also initially changed the name of Strike’s oldest woman friend from Ilsa (“Ill-sah”) to Isla (“Eye-lah”). Thus was largely corrected in later editions.

    4. Hogpro reader PerLish kindly pointed out that the “newborn Lucy” who was left in St. Mawes with four-year old Strike has now been amended to “2-year-old,” in the paperback version of Troubled Blood, making the siblings’ relative ages consistent with the rest of the series.

    When I passed this information on to the Strike.fans Twitter group, participant @LudicrousMonica checked her Troubled Blood paperback and found a few others:

    5. In Chapter 21, “Irene and Janice’s row” is corrected to “Irene and Margot’s row.”

    6. The original chapter 36 had Cynthia Phipps offering to make coffee, then coming back and pouring everyone tea, then refilling Roy’s tea, then Roy taking “another sip of coffee.”  It has been corrected to be 100% tea. Note:  We missed this error in our summary post.

    7. Thankfully, Robin is now remembering going to three funerals in her life. She first speaks of her grandfather’s funeral, when she dropped out of university.  Strangely, however, the following paragraph, about Rochelle Onifade’s cremation, still begins with “The only other funeral…” Mrs. Cunliffe’s services–and the fact that Robin nearly missed them–still don’t get a mention.  Rather bizarre; if you are going to correct it, why not do a full job of it? Surely space wasn’t an issue, after the wordage devoted to Mia Thompson?

    Alas, Dave Polworth’s mother is still in Schrodinger’s Cat limbo. 

    I hope this post will inspire holders of all the paperbacks to go back and take a look to see what else has been changed.  Please enter in the comments so we can maintain a master list.

  • Troubled Blood ‘Listen Along,’ Part Two: Premises for Reading Talbot’s True Book

    ByJohn
    3 Comments

    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!

  • Troubled Blood: Chapters 13 and 14

    ByJohn
    2 Comments

    The last day of posting in a week of reviewing the first two Parts of Troubled Blood, chapters 1 to 14!

    Today, I want to talk about the Walk from the Clerkenwell Clinic to the Three King’s Pub and then the finale of Cormoran’s first review of what he found in the Metropolitan Police cold-case file, the discovery of a secret message in code. It’s a strong finish to the introductory data dumps and foreshadowing in Rowling’s longest novel to date and it has some fun echoing of previous Strike mysteries for the die-hard fan to savor.

    We’ll start with the long walk in chapter 13 from Margot Bamborough’s point of origin on 29 Clerkenwell Street to her supposed destination-never-reached, the Three King’s Pub.

    Join me after the jump for the answer to that ‘Name The Chapter!’ challenge and a thought about the embedded clue to the mystery of both books hidden in the Walk! Read More “Troubled Blood: Chapters 13 and 14”