Last month I wrote a review of the five most likely candidates for the murderer of Leda Strike which included the criteria that makes a suspect more or less likely. ‘Who Killed Leda Strike, Suicide Victim? Leda, Rokeby, Whittaker, Ted, or Dave?’ In addition to the genre requirements of a credible means or opportunity as well as motive, I suggested the guilty party would have to be a devastating revelation to Strike, one that would turn his idea of himself and the world upside-down, which is to say “right-side up,” because this is a signature of Rowling-Galbraith big-twist, cathartic finishes. Of the Big Five — Leda herself, Jeff Whittaker, Rokeby, Ted Nancarrow, and Dave Polworth — I thought Dave Polworth the most likely murderer for genre and meta-literary reasons. I followed up that longish post with a disclaimer that the value of this speculation was not in getting it right but in the explication of what makes the author’s writing work, the keys, if you will: The Value Of Interpretive Speculation or “Why We Know Dave Didn’t Kill Leda.”

Those posts inspired comments in support of and against the Polworth possibility, mostly against, as you’d expect. The best of them, I think, was Bestiary’s argument that Joan or Lucy did it (I responded at no little length). One comment I elevated into a post of its own because it made a credible argument that Charlotte killed her lover’s mother (like the Polworth theory, its fan fiction turned on issues of incest). Yesterday, Louise Freeman introduced the idea that Nick Herbert, gastroenterologist, killed Leda when still a medical student or intern: ‘Troubled Blood — The Dark Side to Two Old Mates.’ In response to that suggestion, a Serious Striker writing as ‘Jeff’ commented that we all have totally missed the boat — Joan and Lucy topped Leda, their sister-in-law and biological mother respectively.

I have deleted that comment from Professor Freeman’s thread and post it below as an independent post for your consideration. I do this not so much because I take the theory seriously — it fails, I think, most obviously on the grounds of how the two women learned to inject heroin into someone else’s veins and how they subdued Leda or convinced her it was a good idea (there were no signs of struggle in the flat) — but because I want each of these ‘So and So Did It!’ theories to have their own home rather than hijack discussion on other posts’ threads. This makes for future ease in finding the specific theory, referencing it, and updating it in light of new information.

I post ‘Jeff’s theory of Half-Sister Lucy and dear Aunt Joan as killers after the jump with his relatively brief explanation and defense (I corrected the typos, changed the paragraphing, and liberally expanded the original for clarity and cogency; apologies in advance to ‘Jeff’ if this editorial heavy-hand was unwelcome). Let me know, Serious Strikers, if you think ‘Lucy and Joan Killed Leda’ has merit and if I have too casually dismissed ‘Jeff’s argument! Read More “Guest Post: Lucy and Joan Killed Leda!”

Merry Christmas, Rowling Readers!

I’m not a big fan of Ian Spence, who writes Jungian interpretations of pop culture at medium.com; see, for example his borderline wing-nut character assassination pieces on ‘Rowling the Christian Fundamentalist Transphobe’ here and here. If you have trouble thinking of Rowling as the advocate of “her own patriarchal, superstitious Christian movement,” you can skip over those Spence pieces.

But even when he’s over-the-top with his disgust for all things Christian, he sometimes comes up with a treasure.

Case in point? The hidden rabbits in Troubled Blood. I don’t think his interpretation of these hares and bunnies holds water and he doesn’t talk about them all (he misses the stuffed rabbits dressed as hunters in the bar where Robin interviews SB’s PA); but did you connect the “buck teeth” of Oonaugh Kennedy — who loves “carrot cake,” right? — with the Athorns’ extraordinarily “long ears” and Anna Phipps’ “pajama case shaped like a rabbit” in which she kept photographs of her mother clandestinely? I sure didn’t.

Spence discusses these finds and his interpretation of them in ‘The Rabbit as Psychopomp: Darkness and light in J.K. Rowling’s Troubled Blood.’ Enjoy!

One of Cormoran and Robin’s ‘to do’ items at the beginning of Troubled Blood is to re-negotiate an extension to the Agency’s lease with the new owners of the Denmark Street property.

In addition to the five open cases still on the agency’s books, he and Robin were juggling increased management demands made by the expanded workforce, and negotiating a year’s extension on the office lease with the developer who’d bought their building.

That task is never checked off their list. In fact, it is never mentioned again. Which means, I’m willing to bet, that this “no extension on the lease” item will come to a crisis early on in Strike6 and the C. B. Strike Detective Agency will need new quarters, fast.

The good news? There is a beautiful property in London available, even standing by, waiting for Strike to move in, Strike has the money to buy or to put up a down payment on it, heck, the owners might just give it to him.

Louise Freeman suggested it first: the Joe North Artists Studio house that was the scene of the Owen-Quine-North literary life back in the day and of Owen Quine’s murder in The Silworm.

North’s will had the provision that both Michael Fancourt and Owen Quine had to agree on the new owner and that the property had to be sold to an artist of some kind. Quine and Fancourt were feuding with such intensity that they never could agree on a sale (meaning “Fancourt refused to approve any sale or rental, money which would have really helped the down on their luck Quines, in retaliation for the suicide of his first wife which he mistakenly believes Quine inspired”). After Owen Quine’s death — in the house — I assume Leanora Quine inherited the family half-interest and veto power. I’d bet, too, that, though she and Orlando could use the money, she has turned down every one of Fancourt’s suggested buyers both to spite him and to preserve the place where her husband was murdered as kind of a shrine.

I wrote Nick Jeffery about the idea and, of course, learned a lot. The North house turns out to be a good and very real possibility.