I received a note from Odd Sverre Hove the day after Lethal White‘s publication and my first post on the subject had gone up. Mr Hove is a correspondent of many years, a theologian living in Norway, and a serious reader of Rowling/Galbraith. He wrote me to say he was as interested in the Ibsen epigraphs from his play Rosmersholm quotations from which Galbraith uses as chapter headings throughout Lethal White. I responded with a beg-letter asking him, my only friend who could read Ibsen in the original language rather than English translation, not to mention with knowledge of Ibsen’s theological and political concerns, to share the ‘White Horse’ references in Rosmersholm and his thoughts as annotations. He did so promptly and I alluded to his notes in my first piece post-publication about the meaning of the white horses — but I only received his permission to share these notes late last week. Please find below the Ibsen ‘White Horse’ notes with Odd Sverre Hove’s commentary at last! 

Three notes as preface:

(1) If you haven’t read the play and want some context, the Wikipedia summary of what some feel is Ibsen’s best can be found here and the online text that Rowling cites as the translation she used can be downloaded here.

(2) Strike is familiar with the play and Robin notes the Biblical link in their conversation on the drive back to London after the group interview at Chiswell House (chapter 44, p 378): “Isn’t there a play where white horses appear as a death omen?” “I don’t know said Robin, changing gear. “Death rides a white horse in Revelations (sic), though.”

(3) The Rosmersholm epigraph at the murder scene, chapter 35, just before the end of Part 1 and the beginning of Part 2, is “… the White Horse! In broad daylight!”

Enjoy Odd’s excerpts and commentary on the “White Horses of Rosmersholm” after the jump, the white horses that didn’t make my seemingly exhaustive list of white horse possibilities pre-publication or anyone else’s that I know of! [Read more…]

Joanne Gray yesterday shared the possibility that Cormoran Strike’s real biological father was not Jonny Rokeby but Jasper Chiswell. Her argument turned on the most famous photograph of Rokeby and Leda Strike, the only one of them together, which picture includes a “playboy aristocrat” and “art dealer.” Both of these men are dead (one by suicide…) so of course the “aristocrat” pictured could not be Jasper Chiswell in the flesh, but the picture points to such a person being a potential answer to the question, “If Rokeby is not Cormoran’s father, who might be?” It turns out, too, that there are several pointers to a Chiswell-Strike relation and resemblance embedded in Lethal White — and Joanne shares many of them below. Enjoy!

Here are five further items found in Lethal White that can be seen to add weight to my theory in yesterday’s post, “Bookending the Past: Cormoran Strike’s Real Father?,” that hidden inside a paragraph on page 456 of Cuckoo’s Calling (UK pb Part Four, Chapter 11) about the most famous photograph of Leda and Jonny, is a mention of a “playboy aristocrat,” the sort of person who could be the actual father of Cormoran Strike.

The following quotes below from Lethal White, are just some of the parallels that the author hints are between Cormoran and the aristocratic Jasper Chiswell. It’s not implied that these parallels are biological (although there’s no demonstrable proof either way), but rather that they point to connections that have not yet been revealed.  

There are enough of these parallels to alert the careful reader that they are more than just coincidence… [Read more…]

Joanne Gray was the first to reveal the mythological underpinnings of the Cormoran Strike mysteries. Today she makes a bold speculative leap from the idea that Jonny Rokeby isn’t Strike’s father: could the pivotal fourth book in this series include an embedded story about the real father of the Peg-Legged PI? Be prepared for a shocker, ye Serious Strikers, because Prof Gray may have blown open the core mystery of Strike’s life, that is, how Leda Strike died and Jonny Rokeby’s involvement with her death. Enjoy!

Bookending the Past

One of the first things that the long time readers of the Cormoran Strike series would have noticed while reading the latest book, Lethal White, is that just when they arrived at the place where they would normally find the introduction of the novel’s main mystery, they were instead greeted by Billy Knight, a clearly distressed individual showing signs of mental illness. Billy had shown up in Cormoran’s office insisting he needed him to investigate a crime that may or may not have taken place twenty years ago. The reader is knocked off balance on several levels (though not as much as Denise, the new secretary) but enough to make them wonder where this could be going.

It turns out that the answers would be a long time coming because Billy only stayed long enough to begin his disjointed and jumbled version of what he could remember, before bolting out of the office and before giving Strike either a phone number or an address.

It soon becomes evident that Billy’s story isn’t the main case but is instead serving as a leitmotif, threading through the rest of the book, making periodic intrusions into the slowly unfolding main mystery. These periodic reminders of Billy’s case come in the guise of frantic phone calls that Cormoran misses more often than he picks up. Through most of the book the ever elusive Billy remains beyond just being physically located (much like the deeply repressed memories that will no doubt trouble Strike throughout the fifth book).

Billy’s story that begins before the book’s main mystery, isn’t resolved until after the resolution of the main mystery during the book’s epilogue. It forms bookends around the main story, which revolves around the book’s murder victim, the aristocratic Minister of Culture, Jasper Chiswell, and his extended, dysfunctional family, as his gravitational pull also brings in those who orbit around his family.

I think Billy’s “bookended” past mystery acts like a test run for book five which looks like it will involve a journey into Cormoran’s own deeply repressed memories of his mother’s murder. Memories that have haunted him, much like Billy’s own tormented thoughts have done, for almost twenty years. [Read more…]