Shift in Hallmarked Man’s Release Date?

February 2, 2025 by Leave a Comment

As noted in my post last week on the release dates this year of Dan Brown’s Secret of Secrets and Suzanne Collins’ Sunrise on the Reaping (see ‘New Dan Brown Novel Due September 9 New Hunger Games Prequel on March 18), the date given on Amazon.com for Rowling-Galbraith’s Hallmarked Man publication was the same as the new Robert Langdon adventure. That seemed a head-scratcher or unforced gaffe akin to scheduling your movie to open the same weekend as a new Star Wars film or on Super Bowl Sunday.

@LudicrousMonica noted yesterday, though, that the Hallmarked Man‘s Amazon pages in the UK, in Germany, in France, and in Australia all now list the publication date as 2 September, a week earlier than the date on the Amazon.com page (US). The speculation on the comment thread there is that the move was made to sidestep a conflict with or get a jump on the Dan Brown blockbuster book release.

My best guess is that the American .com page will shift when we get the official announcement with a cover. Next week? I have no idea why Mulholland Books would change the date on Amazon pages around the world but not in the US.

Interesting aside: three days ago Hallmarked Man  was at #922 on Amazon.com’s bestseller list and #9 on their ‘Private Investigator Mysteries’ list and today is #718 on the first and #7 on the second, a 22% jump in less than half a week.

That’s good news for Mulholland, it being seven months until either of their publication dates. Still, Secret of Secrets is doing significantly better pre-publication:

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Hog Pro Notes

Rowling Tweets on Strike Psyche Profile

January 21, 2025 by Leave a Comment

This too brief but fascinating look at Strike’s psychological make-up by Robert Galbraith herself came at the end of an equally intriguing thread about Hannah Arendt, Eichmann, and the banality of evil “transgender” fellow-travelers.  That longer effort of Rowling’s deserves its own post; today let’s look at the one-off response to someone who engaged Mrs Murray about Arendt. Three thoughts?

(1) Strike Laid Bare: Rowling-Galbraith tells us point blank Strike’s strengths and weaknesses, and, in that exposure suggests strongly the direction of his transformation. “One of the reasons I enjoy writing him is that while he’s fairly honest with himself, he can still be blinkered about his own motivations and the extent to which the past is influencing his present behaviour.” Strike is about to be confronted in inescapable fashion, I think it safe to say, with “his own motivations” which will reveal to him the “extent to which the past is influencing his present behavior.” His ability to change in that crucible will be critical to his relationship with Robin.

(2) Strike and Rowling Agree:  “Character is destiny” but… (Strike) “strokes of unearned good fortune and bad luck may hit anyone, irrespective of character” and (Rowling) “accidents of birth, chance and mischance shape all of our lives, too, and may overwhelm the strongest personalities.” Rowling’s artistry is depicting the morality of archetypal characters when challenged by “past and present context,” depictions of behavior for our reflection, empathetic identification, and cathartic experience. Again, Strike is about to be hit betwen the eyes with all that he has neglected in the “accidents of birth,” Strike’s being a supposedly ‘accidental birth,’ and perhaps by the “chance and mischance” of losing Robin to another man. I for one can’t wait.

(3) A Lake Point? Joanne Rowling was not born with a silver spoon for her porridge but “character” and writing genius as well as “chance and mischance” have brought her to the heights of fame, fortune, and notoriety coupled with adulation, albeit in different spheres. I think it is credible, as a reflective woman experienced in Cognitive Behavior Therapy and one who has studied psychology as an amateur, that Rowling thinks about her life, its twists and turns and tumbles and triumphs, more than most. And that this reflection on the tension between “character” and the “context” of “past and present” circumstances informs her Strike novels as something like an axis.

Hence the importance of this seeming off the cuff or throw-away look at Strike’s psychological perspective. Footnote it for reading before and after Hallmarked Man!

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Twitter

Rowling’s Real World Inspiration for Leda Strike: Nancy Spungen?

January 5, 2025 by Leave a Comment

The new issue of The Rowling Library magazine is out and it’s another winner. Download it here.

I’ll write about my favorite pieces tomorrow. Tonight, though, I want to focus on one paragraph in Oliver Horton’s ‘Ghost Plots,’ his survey of the various plot directions, names, and characters that Rowling chose not to include (or to change into an unrecognizable version of the original) in the Hogwarts Saga. It’s a frustrating article, however interesting all of Horton’s points are (very!), because not once, anywhere, does he mention the source of these ‘Ghost Plots,’ even where Rowling called them that.

The paragraph in question is about Draco Malfoy’s original surname and its probable source.

Harry’s rival Draco Malfoy was at first called Draco Spungen, presumably because of Nancy Spungen, the blonde mentally ill teenage girlfriend of Sid Vicious, bass player in iconic 1970s punk band [the] Sex Pistols. This is a curious choice: the late Ms Spungen is a much maligned figure in rock history. Yet it makes you wonder if other musical notes have been embedded in the story. Are there references to The Beatles and The Smiths, favourite bands of the author, hidden as if under a Cloak of Invisibility? (13)

Again, I don’t know where Horton found this jewel tidbit but, if I ever knew it (as I did many of the Ghost Plots), I’d long ago forgotten it and I’m sure I’d never heard of Nancy Spungen before. So I did the quick online search — the Wikipedia bio, the Rowling Stone ‘Who Killed Nancy Spungen?‘ archive profile, the CrimeAndInvestigation.co.UK piece ‘Sid and Nancy: A Punk Rock Murder Mystery,’ and a piercing film review of Sid and Nancy (‘Requiem for a Blonde: A Tribute to the Most Hated Half of Sid and Nancy‘ — cameo from Sirius Black!).

Check those out if you have a minute. It is painful reading of a wasted life involving mental illness, drugs, and misery in the fast lane of the 70s high-flying punk rock scene. With names like ‘Johnny Rotten’ and ‘Sid Vicious’  — and ‘Nancy Spungen’! — it reads like a Medieval morality play or Victorian allegory of sin and consequences.

Why should we care, though, about Rowling’s one-time long ago fascination with a super-groupie attached to a 70s punk-rock band with drug issues, one who died a mysterious death that many consider a suicide but others are as sure it was murder?

It’s intriguing, to me at least, that Rowling originally named the Malfoys the “Spungens.” She clearly was very familiar with the groupie nutcase attached to Punk royalty who died horribly and mysteriously. The Malfoys are central figures in the Hogwarts drama; Draco plays the part of Harry’s Flashman patrician foil throughout the series so giving him that name had to have been as meaningful (or almost as, at least to the author) as the Malfoy moniker is.

I don’t get the connection of Nancy Spungen with the patrician wizard family, frankly, but, unlike Horton, I think most Rowling readers would connect the super-groupie with Leda Strike.  In a flash.

The question that popped into my mind was “Did Rowling-Galbraith’s fascination with Nancy Spungen take flower years later with Leda Strike, Cormoran’s mother, whose death is shrouded in mystery?” There are some interesting parallels.

Points of Correspondence between the Lives and Deaths of Nancy and Leda:

I came up with seven after reading the four articles mentioned above. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

Pregnancy Traps in Every Rowling Story: The Golden Thread of Coercive Love

January 3, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Dr. John Granger and Nick Jeffery explore the theme of pregnancy traps and coercive love, as a golden thread running through all the published works of J. K. Rowling. The new episode can be downloaded over on the Hogwarts Professor Substack.

After a long delay, Rowling studies returns with a discussion of a theme that is found throughout Rowling’s work. The Hogwarts Professor posts that John and Nick reference can be found here:

Rowling Pregnancy Traps: Merope Gaunt

Rowling Pregnancy Traps: Casual Vacancy’s Krystal Weedon, Kay Bawden

Rowling’s Pregnancy Traps: Bellatrix Lestrange and the Cursed Child Delphini

Rowling’s Pregnancy Traps: Leda Strike

Rowling’s Pregnancy Traps: Four Strikes

Rowling’s Pregnancy Traps: Last Strikes

Rowling’s Pregnancy Traps: Fantastic Beasts, The Ickabog, The Christmas Pig

Filed Under: Casual Vacancy, Christmas Pig, Cormoran Strike, Nick Jeffery, Pregnancy Trap, The Ickabog

Rowling’s Hallmarked Man Publication Date At Last!

December 27, 2024 by 1 Comment

Fans are now able to pre-order The Hallmarked Man, J. K. Rowling’s eighth instalment of the Strike-Ellacott saga on Amazon. The online store is showing a release date of 9th September 2025 in both the US and UK pages. My UK order is showing a delivery date of 17th September, and John’s US order is showing delivery on 9th September. So, case closed, we have a release date, right?

Some notes of caution: No official J. K. Rowling, Robert Galbraith or Little Brown (or Sphere, or Mulholland) channel has confirmed this date. No pre-order date is a guarantee that a book will be delivered on that date, or in that year (or in that decade).

My personal record for a late pre-order is N. A. M. Rodger’s The Price of Victory, volume three of his A Naval History of Britain. First available for pre-order in 2013 (volume two was published in 2006), delivery was made in October 2024. In this case, due to Dr. Rodger’s illness, publication was delayed for more than a decade. Achieving almost mythical status among fans of his work, the delivered book was well worth the wait.

So 9th of September could be either:

  • An accurate date, leaked early by Amazon.
  • A best guess based on a publisher’s tentative schedule (2036 anyone?)
  • A clever and well worked plot by Dr. Beatrice Groves to win a case of Doombar.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Nick Jeffery