Overview: Rowling-Galbraith wrote Troubled Blood not only as a ring composition, her standard narrative structure, but also as an astrological chart or clock-face. The 73 chapters divide neatly into twelve houses or hours, the chapter groups correspond at meaningful points with the values assigned to specific astrological houses, and a St John’s Cross is visible in the four angular houses of the chart. The author has, in other words, taken her structural artistry to an entirely different and higher plane than she ever has before.

Introduction: HogwartsProfessor.com, if it is to be tagged with a critical school category name, is probably best labeled as ‘Formalist.’ I’d give that tag the prefix ‘Estecean’ to avoid confusing what we have chosen to focus on at this website — the structure and style concerns of an intentional and capable writer who as often as not is ‘writing about writing,’ that is, the conscious experience of narrative — from the soulless and social justice excesses of structuralism or deconstruction, but the ‘Formalism’ shoe fits, frankly, with or without the modifier. Search for ‘Ring Composition’ in the site search space in the left column of the web page if you doubt that.

Troubled Blood, as far as ring writing goes, is Rowling-Galbraith’s most involved and intricate piece of writing. As explained in the exposition of each of the first six parts of the novel I wrote during my first read-through, the novel as a whole is a ring composition: the latch is in parts one and seven, the story turn is in Part Four which creates a story axis in connecting with the latch in the first and last parts, and the corresponding Parts to and from that center, two and six as well as three and five, match up for the classic turtleback.

The book corresponds as well with the seven book turtle-back structure of the Harry Potter novels in reflecting the third novel of the series, Career of Evil, and, once again, its corresponding number in the Hogwarts Saga, Order of the Phoenix. For real Ring Wraiths who know that the fifth book in the Potter series ring corresponds closely with the first book in that series, there are also many notes connecting Troubled Blood with Cuckoo’s Calling, the first cold case Robin and Cormoran solve, and with Philosopher’s Stone.

Incredibly, though, there is more. Each of the first six parts of Troubled Blood is written as a ring composition within itself, the first two parts being seven chapter rings in reflection of the book’s seven parts and the first seven books of Strike being a ring, too. Wheels within wheels within wheels. This is structural artistry that, however arcane it may seem to the reader new to Rowling-Galbraith’s formal fetish, is only “more of the same” to those of us who have been charting her novel-rings (and longer twitter threads!) since 2010.

With Troubled Blood, however, Rowling has added another dimension of structure and style that reflects and reinforces the symbolic and thematic meaning of the book. In addition to the ‘Wheels Within Wheels’ Ring artistry, Strike5 is also laid out as an astrological chart, more easily visualized as a clock face, whose twelve sections or ‘houses’ correspond with the twelve houses of Western horoscope natal charts and the three groupings of these houses into St John crosses (the four house astrological bundles called “angular, succedent, and cadent”).

Four Pointers to Embedded Astrological Clock: Rowling signals this in four ways. First, the astrological clock at Hampton Court was the defining image in the book’s marketing. The cover designers have said that this was Rowling’s choice (hat tip to Nick Jeffrey):

The author’s input identified this as an ideal image to use. The shape and construction of a clock face also created an ideal framing device for the design to set the lettering within and draw the viewer into the scene. This also achieved something which was more emblematic rather than just location-based.

If that isn’t enough, the chapter in which we first see the astrological clock includes the revelation that Margot used to leave her husband messages hidden inside an ornate clock in their living room; Roy confesses in the next chapter that his wife left a cry of the heart to him, ‘Talk to me!,’ in just this fashion the week of her disappearance. The idea of a ‘secret message in a clock’ is planted.

Second, there is the astrological chart drawn up by Talbot for the moment of Margot Bamborough’s disappearance, which is simultaneously dismissed by the Dynamic Duo as Looney Tunes and studied endlessly by them. It gives the literal and figurative shape to their supposed-to-be year long investigation — and that Talbot chart corresponds exactly with the Aries to Pisces organization of the standard twelve houses organization of astrological charts.

Third, the story is set as a one year frame, a deadline established by Anna Phipps and Kim Sullivan, that corresponds to the zodiac cycle. The Dynamic Duo work two extra months after failing to meet the deadline, an addendum and addition to the traditional cycle of twelve that Rowling teasingly refers to via the embedded text of Astrology 14 by Stephen Schmidt that adds two constellations to the zodiac (nota bene: this charting won’t be neat, right?).

Fourth and last on my first listing, St John’s crosses are spread through-out Troubled Blood, most notably in Clerkenwell, at the Phipps gazebo, in a brick at Hampton Court, and in the ‘Dig Here’ note of the novel’s Hermes figure, Carl Oakden, in which readers are told that the secret of the book is to be found buried beneath the eight point cross.

Rowling divides the work into seven Parts, however, rather than twelve. How are we to ‘get’ that the book is an astrological chart if it isn’t obviously broken into twelve sections? More important, how do we divide the book into twelve sections? Follow me after the jump for the fascinating details. [Read more…]