The HogPro Kanreki Project – Lake and Shed Readings Cursed Child to Lethal White

July 26, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery continue with our Lake and Shed reviews of the twenty-one stories written at least in part by J. K. Rowling. Join us for our celebration of Mrs Murray’s 60th birthday, and her Kanreki, 還暦, or calendar re-birth.

Nick reviews the history of how Rowling was sold on the idea of a Wizarding World stage production via a bit of bait and switch marketing and John reads the review of the Jack Thorn script by Pepperdine English Professor James Thomas. Neither John nor Nick is a big fan of the play but their back and forth about the several controversies connected with it and the question of its being “the eighth Harry Potter story” are still challenging and fun.

Nick does his signature deep dive into the history of the Fantastic Beasts film franchise’s origins in Warner Brothers’ determination to keep the Wizarding World profit-pillar in their portfolio alive after the last Harry Potter adaptation — and Rowling’s equal determination that they not use their copyright privilege to muck up her legacy with an Indiana Jones meets Crocodile Dundee knock-off. John takes the Shed pole in the conversation and shares his months long pursuit of the shooting text screenplay, the actual last screenplay over which Rowling had control.

Nick discusses the embedded class struggle in the book and its roots in Rowling’s background before dropping the bomb of the real world identity of Jack O’Kent and his unhappy family. John is so taken aback by this revelation that Nick has to prompt the Shed portion of the conversation with a fun history of the Sonia Friedman production of Ibsen’s Rosmersholm on London’s West End, a show starring Thom Burke as Rosmer and which ended just before Bronte Studios beginning the filming of Lethal White.

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Cursed Child, Fantastic Beasts, Fourth Generation, Nick Jeffery, Substack Post

The HogPro Kanreki Project – Lake and Shed Readings Cuckoo to Career

July 25, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Dr John Granger and I continue with our Lake and Shed reviews of the twenty-one stories written at least in part by J. K. Rowling. Join us for our celebration of Mrs Murray’s 60th birthday, and her Kanreki, 還暦, or calendar re-birth.

The ‘Lake’ point that Nick explores is the identity of the real Deeby Mac, namely, Di Brooks, Rowling’s former security director and currently her office manager, a veteran with years of experience in the SIB. John’s ‘Shed’ point is his pushback against the idea that Calling wasn’t really the first book in the series because Rowling has said she had the idea for it after Silkworm and only chose it because the case would make her detective famous.

The ‘Lake’ point that Nick reveals is the probable identity of ‘Jenkins,’ the mystery person to whom Strike 2 is dedicated, a revelation consequent to no little detective work (and a very close reading of Louisa May Alcott!). He also discusses some real-life literary infighting in contemporary London that might have been lifted from the pages of Silkworm. John argues that this ur-novel of the series, its point of conception, is Rowling’s not especially opaque guide to how to understand a novelist’s life and to appreciate their work, in short, her first ‘Lake and Shed’ discussion (albeit one embedded in story).

The ‘Lake’ point that Nick explores is Rowling’s personal experience of violence against women and her determination to push back against the misogynist age she believes we have been living in for decades. John details the litany of crimes committed against women in the third Strike novel and suggests that in time, when we have the series as a whole, appreciation of the artistry involved will counter-balance the shock first-time readers feel on entering this boucherie.

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Cuckoo's Calling, Fourth Generation, Nick Jeffery, Substack Post

Will the Real Sam Barclay Please Stand Up?

March 29, 2025 by 1 Comment

J. K. Rowling has been remarkably reticent to acknowledge real people who have inspired characters within her works. There is of course Gilderoy Lockhart, who she has admitted is based on someone she knows, but has never revealed who that person is. Speculation will continue as to whether the inspiration is our beloved Headmaster (it isn’t), until Rowling finally lets the cat out of the bag. (He really isn’t…) 

The only character who is deliberately based on a real person is Gilderoy Lockhart. [Laughter]. Maybe he is not the one that you would think of, but I have to say that the living model was worse. [Laughter]. He was a shocker! The lies that he told about adventures that he’d had, things he’d done and impressive acts that he had committed… He was a shocking man. I can say this quite freely because he will never in a million years dream that he is Gilderoy Lockhart. I am always frightened that he is going to turn up one day. He is just one of those people from your past whom you feel you have never quite shaken off. I will look up one day at a signing and he will say, “Hello, Jo”. [Laughter]. Other people have contributed the odd characteristic, such as a nose, to a character, but the only character who I sat down and thought that I would base on someone is Gilderoy Lockhart. It made up for having to endure him for two solid years.

J.K. Rowling at the Edinburgh Book Festival, in response to a question from the audience, through Accio Quote.

It was big news to fellow Rowling obsessives, when a few weeks ago, J. K. Rowling stated that Strike contractor Sam Barclay was 100% inspired by a friend of hers. In this case, I think we know enough about the character and looks of Sam Barclay to hazard a guess. Check out mine after the jump!

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Nick Jeffery

Rowling Troubled Blood Source Material — Louise Penny’s Nature of the Beast?

March 7, 2025 by Leave a Comment

As I explained in a January post, ‘Louise Penny: Chief Inspector Gamache,’ no less a novelist than Lou Berney told me in 2016 that I had to read Penny’s Bury Your Dead (he was my MFA adviser, so the ‘had to’ had real force). It delivered the punch he promised: Penny’s planning gave her sixth Gamache novel a series of twists at the finish that left me dizzy for several days. I wasn’t the only one that was head spinning and marveling at her accomplishment; the novel won an Agatha Award, an Anthony Award, a Macavity Award, an Arthur Ellis Award, and a Nero Award the year of its publication.

What was so great about it and why should a serious reader of Rowling-Galbraith care? In brief, Bury Your Dead revisits the murder of the previous novel in the series, The Brutal Telling, while simultaneously solving another murder and slow-revealing the near-death experience Gamache suffered between the two novels as he struggled to prevent a terrorist attack in Quebec. That’s its greatness; you should read it (get the one volume edition of Telling and Dead if you can) if only to feel the mystery genre boundaries stretched by a master story-teller.

What’s in it for the Strike-Ellacott reader? As I hinted in January, I think Hallmarked Man is going to have Bury Your Dead echoing, at least with respect to the revisiting what you thought you knew for sure at the end of Running Grave — and finding out you were wrong. Penny’s one-two punch would be an excellent warm-up for that imaginative judo experience.

I have read twelve of Penny’s Chief Inspector Gamache mysteries in the last forty days and enjoyed every one. I doubt I’ll re-read the series (should I manage to get through the remaining seven books in it – and, no, I won’t be reading the mystery she co-wrote with, egad, Hilary Clinton…) but I am a real fan of the ‘Three Pines’ cast of characters and an admirer of Penny’s craft.

What moved me to revisit the Canadian mysteries today was reflection on the eleventh novel in the series, The Nature of the Beast. It was nominated for an Anthony Award, an Agatha Award, and was the winner of Left Coast Crime‘s Best World Mystery when it came out, though it was perhaps the most preposterous of the Three Pines murder mysteries. Three Pines is a tiny town, lost to the world, on the Vermont-Quebec border with a population of about one hundred; making it the nexus of the international arms trade and a hide-away for serial killers and Vietnam era war criminals was quite the stretch even in Penny’s hands.

Two things about it rather startled me. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Hog Pro Notes

Troubled Blood Quiz and Serious Striker Challenge: A Kelly Loomis Guest Post

March 3, 2025 by 2 Comments

Long time reader and Backchannel Moderator correspondent Kelly Loomis wrote to me about a Troubled Blood quiz recently posted at the Robert-Galbraith.com website on the epigraphs in Strike5. I asked her to write it up as a HogwartsProfessor Guest Post and she chose to do it as a challenge rather than a tell-all piece. I haven’t taken the quiz, I confess, but I look forward to seeing if anyone else spots the mistake Kelly has before Team Rowling corrects it!

Hog Pro readers have long been aware of Rowling’s gaffes in editing. Eagle eyed readers back in the Potter era, for example, spotted that Rowling miscalculated how many likely students were at Hogwarts. More recently, re-readers of the Strike-Ellacott novels were gobsmacked to read in Troubled Blood (chapter 46) that Robin Ellacott had attended only two funerals, a count that failed to include the all important plot point of Mrs. Cunliffe’s funeral in Masham that was featured in The Silkworm.

Of all Rowling’s ‘flints,’ this was the one that I remember most vividly. During my first trip through Troubled Blood, after reading “Robin had only attended two funerals. Her maternal grandfather had died just before she dropped out of university…The only other funeral she’d attended had been four years previously, when she and Strike had attended the cremation of a murdered girl in the course of their first murder investigation,”  I literally yelled out loud “What about Matthew’s mother?”

That memory came to mind last week when I received an email from Robert-Galbraith.com, in which there was a linked quiz based on Troubled Blood.  I clicked on it, of course, to test my epigraph knowledge (Faerie Queene!) and immediately spotted an error in one of the questions. None of the answers offered for this question were correct.

Do Team Rowling staff members put together these quizzes? Have they actually read the books? How much input does Rowling have or does she review these pieces before they go out? How many of you Serious Strikers can spot the error? Am I mistaken about the gaffe? Let us know in the comments below!

 

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Guest Posts