How to Think About ‘The Ink Black Heart’ – Seven Guides for Making Predictions

February 10, 2022 by 9 Comments

 

@CormStrikeFan, the twitter handle of StrikeFans.com, tweeted the list above early in December last year with the comment, “Here’s a predictions checklist for The Ink Black Heart you can fill in.” The thread beneath the list includes StrikeFans’ own choices and some of the Serious Strikers who follow these tweets shared their checked lists, too.

I’m of two minds about the list.

On the one hand, it’s a brilliant idea, a handy compilation of plot point options from which the reader who knows the story well will get profound endorphin hits while reflecting on the likelihood of each occurring in Strike6. It took some real self-restraint not to print out a copy of the StrikeFans list and start checking boxes myself.

On the other hand, the list is really disappointing. Only two of the possibilities on offer require anything more than having read the series (the one about “The Black Heart Pub in Camden” and the other about Marilyn Manson). There isn’t a hint or suggestion beyond the “Swans appear somewhere” that any of the literary artistry and meaning of the Strike series that we have discussed here at HogwartsProfessor thus far might be helpful in predicting what will happen in the coming books.

After the jump, to correct this failing I will share a one-step introduction to the seven subject guides with which Serious Strikers here read the adventures of the Peg-Legged PI. I’ll add brief prediction possibilities that each guide suggests as things to look for. The good news about this exercise is that, though there is little chance that I will hit on the actual Rowling-Galbraith plot points or story, I will be using the tools and ideas that have helped us understand the five books we have in hand and which will definitely be deployed in the exegesis of Ink Black Heart. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

Patricia Baker: Chamber-Silkworm PSI

February 9, 2022 by Leave a Comment

In my first post on the Parallel Series Idea (PSI) last week, I advised readers reviewing older posts we have written, especially those on Goblet and Lethal White, to “Be sure to read the comment threads on those posts because some of the best parallels are reported by readers there.” The problem is I didn’t take my own advice in reading the comments. Well, I did but it lead me to where I had not.

Louise Freeman commented on yesterday’s Chamber and Silkworm PSI post, “I think I remember a list of parallels from our first Strike podcast on Reading, Writing, Rowling.” I looked up that podcast, “Lighting Up ‘Strike’ – ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Cormoran Strike’,” in hopes of finding some great Career of Evil and Prisoner of Azkaban interior echoing for the post I’m working on. The conversation about PSI starts at 50:00 and it’s pretty good. I’ll have to go back and include as comments the Stone-Cuckoo links I heard there I didn’t make in the post dedicated to that pairing — and my Career-Prisoner piece will be much better for this blast-cast from the past.

The embarrassing thing? Katie McDaniel, the host of ‘Reading, Writing, Rowling’ asked me in that episode to share the most compelling evidence for the Parallel Series Idea and I obliged her — by sharing a comment made by Patricia Baker in 2014 in response to my first suggestion that the Potter and Strike series were being written in parallel. In her comment, she lists a host of Chamber-Silkworm echoes that are the same as, as good as, or better than the six I listed yesterday.

In recognition of her great catches (and of my failure to read the comment threads I recommended readers check out), I’m devoting this post to her finds, which you’ll find listed below the jump. I will update yesterday’s post with an Addendum with links to the original comment and to this post — and I will write Patricia Baker to apologize for my oversight and to invite her to share her Stone-Cuckoo and Prisoner-Career lists!

After the jump, then, Patricia Baker’s 2014 Chamber-Silkworm PSI correspondences and one more idea about where to look for parallels Serious Strikers have found and written up. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

Strike-Potter PSI: Silkworm and Chamber

February 8, 2022 by 9 Comments

‘PSI’ stands for ‘Parallel Series Idea,’ which, as explained yesterday, is the thesis generated at HogwartsProfessor in 2014 that Rowling-Galbraith is writing the Cormoran Strike novels in parallel with their respective numbers in the Harry Potter seven books. PSI has become something of a ‘given’ or premise in speculation about what is coming in the series; it is assumed here, for instance, that Ink Black Heart will echo in important ways Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (see Louise Freeman’s first efforts along these lines, First Flip of the Tarot Cards: Louise’s Predictions for Strike 6) and Strike7 will be something of a finale for the first seven Strike books akin to Deathly Hallows.

The challenge before us is that the PSI thesis has only been demonstrated or even explored in any depth with respect to the parallels in Lethal White to Goblet of Fire and those in Troubled Blood to Order of the Phoenix. Yesterday I posted six parallels between Cuckoo’s Calling and Philosopher’s Stone, today I hope to write up the parallels first spotted in 2014 between The Silkworm  and Chamber of Secrets, and deo volente we will soon after have a third post about Career of Evil and Prisoner of Azkaban.

When these posts are up, I will create a PSI Pillar Post for ease of access and referencing as Serious Strikers prepare for the release of Ink Black Heart. If you think, as several writers here do, that Charlotte Campbell is the Strike series Voldemort and Jonny Rokeby either the Dumbledore stand-in, the Severus Snape parallel, or both, previous PSI study will be an important touchstone and starting point for your speculation about Strike6.

After the jump, then, a listing of the parallels between The Silkworm, easily Rowling’s most self-consciously literary or ‘meta’ work to date, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, my favorite stand-alone novel in the Hogwarts Saga. This list will be woefully incomplete and is written largely to serve as an invitation to you to jump in via the comment boxes and share all the parallels I missed — or parallels with other Potter books or to question the entire Parallel Series Idea. Let the conversation begin! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

Strike-Potter Parallels: Cuckoo & Stone

February 6, 2022 by 5 Comments

In my second post about The Silkworm post-publication in 2014, I launched the idea that Rowling-Galbraith was writing her Cormoran Strike series in parallel with the seven Harry Potter novels. I wrote:

Reading The Silkworm, consequently, it’s only natural that we serious readers of the Hogwarts Saga be sensitive to what we hear or experience in this detective novel that seem to be echoes from the Boy Who Lived’s magical adventures.  I want to make three observations for your comment and correction here, thoughts that will not include a list of fun correspondences (did you flinch when you read that you can “hear the rumbling of the traffic on Charing Cross Road’ from Strike’s flat? Me, too), but all of which, I think, put the Cormoran Strike novels in a new light.

First, as noted in my ‘first thoughts’ post that I put up after reaching the half-way point of Silkworm, there are several rather jarring correspondences between this mystery and the second novel of the Harry Potter series, Chamber of Secrets. The key to the case, as Strike observes more than the once, is the book within the book, namely Bombyx Mori, and its transparent depictions in story of the suspects in the murder of the book’s author.

Along the way to discovering whodunnit, we are given a short course in the difficulties and inevitable mistakes to be made in drawing dot-to-dot correspondences that seem obvious and are not. Readers of Chamber of Secrets, perhaps the best stand-alone Potter novel, will recall a similar book-within-a-book experience there with Riddle’s diary and how we are to understand what we learn from reading or entering into it. Hagrid is sent to Azkaban because of what is misunderstood about the events depicted — and the woman whose “purity of desire” makes Strike sure she is not guilty, an echo of Harry’s surety about the Gameskeeper, is also jailed unjustly and then liberated.

My first idea for your consideration is this: Ms Rowling is writing this seven book series in parallel with her previous seven book series. {emphasis in original}

My second and third points in that post were that she was doing this so “this parallel series can act as the key to a right understanding of the first series, the Hogwarts adventures” and, that in doing this, she “invites her readers to understand her fiction as a psychological distillation of her experiences, which is to say, we are to read them through the filter of her biography if we are to get at the heart of their meaning.” The second point, like the first, has been confirmed by each new book, and the third, which seemed a stretch even to me at the time, has been supported by the author in her remarkable contribution of “inspiration” to the Museum of Curiosity in 2019.

The idea of a Parallel Series has become something of a touchstone or premise here at HogwartsProfessor. Louise Freeman predicted years before Strike4 was published, for instance, that Lethal White would take place against the background of the 2012 London Olympics just as Goblet of Fire used the TriWizard Tournament even though this seemed unlikely given the time spacings between the books, Cuckoo to Career. Beatrice Groves, similarly, guessed that the ‘Trelawney’ song would be sung in Troubled Blood because of the important place of Professor Trelawney’s prophecy in Order of the Phoenix. The Parallel Series idea (hereafter ‘PSI’), in other words, not only has interpretative value but can be and has been used to predict future book plot points.

Here’s the problem, or, as the self-help gurus and positive thinking savants like to say, the challenge.

We have an excellent collection of the Goblet of Fire and Lethal White parallels. In fact, there are two PSI posts about this pair: Does Lethal White Echo Goblet of Fire? and Lethal White: Every Goblet of Fire Link. Be sure to read the comment threads on those posts because some of the best parallels are reported by readers there. We haven’t been as thorough about Troubled Blood and the Order of the Phoenix echoes embedded in Strike 5, but Louise Freeman posted her first finds the day of publication and invited Serious Strikers to write up their catches at her Parallel Placeholder Post. As recently as last week, we had a major parallel discovery put up on that thread by Michelle about Harry and Cormoran’s respective daddy issues in Phoenix and Troubled Blood, a subject I wrote about at length yesterday.

What we don’t have are collections of the parallels for the first, second, and third books of each series: Cuckoo’s Calling to Philosopher’s Stone, The Silkworm to Chamber of Secrets, and Career of Evil to Prisoner of Azkaban. I think PSI as a hypothesis is on pretty strong footing already based on the extensive work and findings for the Book4 and Book5 pairs that has been done. I’m curious, though, whether the first books are as laden with references to the Hogwarts Saga as are the most recent.

Today, then, beginning with this post, I want to put up three placeholders where Serious Strikers can list their PSI finds for the first three book sets. When each of those is up, I will create a PSI Pillar Post where all will be collected in one place for ease in searching and for reference purposes. Join me after the jump for my list of seven parallels between Cuckoo’s Calling and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and invitation to you to share the echoes you heard on your repeated trips through each of those books! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Cuckoo's Calling

Loving Mom-Bad Dad, Killer Rokeby, and Why Rowling is Writing the Strike Series in Parallel with Her Harry Potter Novels

February 5, 2022 by 4 Comments

A thoughtful reader named Michelle left a comment on the ‘Troubled Blood-Order of the Phoenix Parallels’ post’s comment thread yesterday that I want to reprint here in full for the usual reasons I bump comments into posts — important insight, ease of reference, disappearance prevention, et cetera. I also do this because Michelle’s comment provides an occasion for me to write out several thoughts I’ve wanted to expand on here, as disconnected as they might seem in that long title above.

Michelle is re-reading Troubled Blood and notes an important parallel between Harry and Cormoran with respect to their relationship with their fathers.

As I undertake a reread of Troubled Blood, I’m struck by the steps both Harry and Strike make towards resolving their long-simmering daddy issues. One of these parallels was noted above, but for me the similarities run still deeper. The journeys in question, granted, start from opposite poles (Harry’s hero-worship of James looks nothing like Strike’s profound antipathy towards Rokeby). But in the fifth books of their respective series, both our protagonists are forced to face facts about their fathers that are directly at odds with their pre-conceived narratives.

Harry’s vision of “Snape’s worst memory” casts his father in a horrifying new light, and it’s to Harry’s credit that he accepts those truths immediately even as he searches for extenuating circumstances. Strike’s analysis is less clear-eyed when faced with the notion that old Jonny may not, in fact, be as bad as first thought (I say this as an avowed skeptic of the Rokeby murderer theory floated elsewhere on this site, so please apply salt liberally if you are a truer believer 🙂 ).

A parade of relatives stream into Strike’s life to encourage him to resume contact with his estranged father. The sheer number of people prepared to intervene on Jonny’s behalf, to me at least, suggest the man has more going for him as a parent than Strike has previously been willing to credit. Calls from his relatives are taken up by dearly departed Aunt Joan, who puts her finger on so many of Strike’s hang-ups and identity struggles to date (Strike discards this advice and insight, as is his wont, but are we really surprised? 🙂 ).

Rokeby himself even emerges from the shadows to initiate direct contact. He’s not exactly well-repaid for his efforts, but to me this further speaks to a genuine desire for connection with the son who’s long shunned him. And finally there’s the cancer diagnosis that renders Rokeby both mortal and potentially more relatable in Strike’s eyes,  having recently gone through the same experience with Joan.

If I had to hazard a guess about one aspect of Ink Black Heart and Strike7, it’s that one of our two favourite detectives will continue to gain perspective on his complex paternal relationship and ultimately arrive at a view of Jonny Rokeby that’s more nuanced and psychologically healthy.

If killer Rokeby does prove to be correct, I cheerfully accept any and all mocking glee this post may provoke in future. 🙂

Three Notes on Michelle’s Insights and Errors After the Jump: [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike