Who Killed Leda Strike? The East End Strike Family Syndicate and Shanker

February 13, 2025 by 6 Comments

Lindsay McCasland at the Strike & Ellacott Files (S&EF) podcast kindly responded to my post ‘Bad Dads and Peter Gillespie,’ in which she shared the url to a write-up at their website of the reasoning behind their conviction that Peter Gillespie killed Leda Strike. ‘The “Gillespie” Theory’ post has all the iterations of this idea going back, if I have followed the clues in the first post correctly that point to their ‘In the Post’ podcast, to October 2021. To my delight, a significant part of their reasoning was based on Beatrice Groves’ speculation via the rules of ring composition that Strike 7 would reveal Leda’s seeming suicide was not a suicide as were the staged murders in Cuckoos Calling and Lethal White.

Running Grave, of course, proved a disappointment in this regard (if it did have its Strikes 1 and 4 parallels and close off the seven book ring/asterisk neatly, cf., here, here, and here). If anything, Strike 7 gave us another murder staged as suicide, Charlotte Campbell’s, that will be revealed in the three book addendum epicycle to the first seven book ring. See Nick Jeffery’s ‘The Strange Death of Charlotte Campbell‘ and my ‘Charlotte Campbell Murder Mystery‘ for more on that.

The S&EF post, though, on ‘The “Gillespie” Theory’ had an extra bonus for those who read through the excellent comment thread following it. The most recent comment (or the first one made if the most recent part of the thread appears at the beginning of comments?) was a completely different theory, albeit one involving Gillespie in Leda’s death along the same lines as Lindsay McCasland’s and “Pools” ideas. The author, Gary James, has written an alternative explanation of Strike’s conception and the death of his mother in which Leda’s first husband is crime syndicate leader in London’s East End, Shanker is the child of the mafia leader and Leda, and the rhyming slang meanings of ‘Shanker’ and ‘Bunsen’ play a great part.

The platform used by S&EF does not provide links for comments the way WordPress blogs do or even a time-stamp and there is no contact information available for Gary James. He (or she writing under a pseudonym) asks at the end of his longish comment, though, for feedback on his involved theory. I have taken the liberty, consequently, of re-posting his theory after the jump in order to fulfill his request for support and criticism and to invite you to do the same. If Gary James hasn’t already been invited to a S&EF podcast to expand on his theory, I hope he is soon!

Join me after the jump, then, for the ‘Strike Crime Syndicate Theory’ as explanation of ‘Who Killed Leda Strike?’ [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike

Mailbag: Bad Dads and Peter Gillespie

February 11, 2025 by 1 Comment

I received a pretty involved question this morning from long time reader and correspondent Wayne Stauffer, one of the original ‘HogPro All-Pros.’ While attempting to answer it, I was compelled to reconsider one of the leading suspects in any line-up of likely Leda Strike murderers, namely, Peter Gillespie. I’ve been relatively dismissive of this fandom theory — see Who Killed Leda Strike? Peter Gillespie for my thoughts way back in 2021 — but Wayne’s question and the latest iteration of the S&E podcast crew theory has me thinking I was wrong not to argue Gillespie is the most likely character to have killed Cormoran’s mom, one readers should think of immediately as the killer.

Here is Wayne’s question, one that isn’t about Leda or Peter per se but Rowling’s ‘Daddy Issues’ and how it plays out in her fiction:

I’m wondering what the Hogwarts Professoriate thinks about an aspect of JKR’s works so far.

More than once the topic of her “strained” relationship with her father has been mentioned, yet in her writings so far we don’t see much of her vicariously working through any lingering “daddy issues” in her fiction (that is, characters with those issues).

We have Luna and Xeno Lovegood, Ginny and Arthur Weasley, and a bit of Hermione and Mr. Granger in the Harry Potter books, but those are all positive relationships.

I’m not as knowledgeable in her Strike novels, though I haven’t seen much discussed on your website. Robin seems to have other issues, but not those.

Casual Vacancy characters have a variety of dysfunctions, but Ickabog and Christmas Pig seem to be free of these.

Since 4th gen Rowling Studies is digging into biographical and psychological influences, I’m wondering how much this Daughter/Father dynamic plays in the writing. 

My answer to Wayne was to send him two long posts I’d written, neither of which addressed this subject the way he framed it, but both of which laid out Rowling’s fictional depictions of her relationship with ‘Peter John Rowling,’ her father, via characters named “Peter” or “Simon” and those named “John” or “James.” In the first post, ‘Christmas Pig 1: Jack Jones, Peter, and John,’ you get the Rowling family history and its reflection in the Bad Dads of her work; in the second, ‘Exceptions to the Peter-John Rule: John Bristow, Dolores Umbridge, Matt Cunliffe,’ I answered objections to the theory, namely (!), those characters named ‘John’ who were jerks (or much worse).

It wasn’t a direct answer to Wayne’s question, but it did share in a fairly cohesive way my thinking about “how much this Daughter/Father dynamic plays in the writing” of Rowling-Galbraith. I’m hoping that Prof Stauffer will consider writing up his notes on the actual Daddy-Daughter relationships in all Rowling’s work, a step beyond anything I have done.

He hinted at such an expository exercise in his answer to my response, in which he wrote, “So, Rowling has her characters embody the bad dad qualities more than she has them working through issues?” I think that’s about right, but I haven’t done the necessary survey of the work. My initial reservation would be ‘Jack Jones’ in Christmas Pig whose name is in essence ‘John squared’ and can be assumed to be the equivalent of ‘Joanne;’ the whole mythic Dante-esque alchemical transfiguration of this character in the Land of the Lost is his “working through” his Bad Dad “issues.” The money paragraph of the Christmas Pig post above:

Rowling dedicates the book to David and has explained that the story toys, the cuddly pig favorite and its replacement, reflect two such cuddly pigs that her son adored. Jack Jones, however, is a name, front and back, that is a form of the name John; he is Joanne Rowling more than David Murray, her name also derived from Johannes, the Greek word for John (Rowling has given her daughter Mackenzie the middle name Jean, the more obvious feminine form of John). To put all my allegorical and sublime symbolism cards on the table at the start, what Jack has lost in the story is his father, what Holly fears losing to her step-brother is her father, the Pig is the exteriorized ‘heart’ or love he has as token or “transitional object” of maternal, unconditional love, and the story of the Loser is the sublimated agony of separation from Dad experienced as a child-hero must in the world of things and language. The Christmas Pig, though, in addition to this psychological allegory or dream-journey is an anagogical tale of seeking communion with the Father in Heaven through the light in one’s heart, the Johannine theology of logos-love that permeates Rowling’s work.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Christmas Pig, Cormoran Strike, Hog Pro Notes, Mailbag

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