Strike7’s Parallels to ‘Cuckoo’s Calling’ Make it the Completion of a Ring Cycle

Last week I wrote a post saying that it was time to start pretending that Rowling had died or written her last book and move on to the next (and final) stage of literary criticism: ‘Is Rowling’s Best Work Behind Her Now?’ I caught quite a bit of blow-back on that intentionally provocative post, but not for the reasons I expected.

I thought Strike fandom would line-up to say what an idiot I was because the detective series is supposed to be ten books long per the author and her publisher, the Strike-Ellacott romance obviously hasn’t played out, and the last three novels have been the best in the series, no sign of Rowling-Galbraith having lost her touch. Silly me, I anticipated that readers would object to the assertion that Cormoran Strike wasn’t over, rather than quibble at my twenty-five year rule (when I listed significant counter-evidence to that rule).

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Links and Summaries of the Eleven Strike7 Ring Posts, Three Take-Aways, Value of Structural Analysis in Evaluating the Reviews of ‘Running Grave’

Last week I finished my series of eleven ring-reading posts about Rowling-Galbraith’s Running Grave, her latest Cormoran Strike novel, in which series I did a structural analysis of its 944 pages using Mary Douglas’ criteria for chiasmus from her Thinking in Circles. Today I am posting a one-stop collection of links to each of these posts with a short summary of each post’s contents as well as my conclusions and take-away thoughts about the month long project for the convenience of future readers. It is the Strike7 Ring Reading Project Index; enjoy!

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The Final Interior Ring of Strike7 and Its Meaning In The Middle

What a great finish! Let’s jump right into the Running Grave Part Nine ring reading with a breakdown of how the final Part works as a ring. Tomorrow I’ll do a deep dive into the last Part’s connections with Parts One and Five in the whole-novel ring and then I’ll close this series with my first thoughts at the end of this marathon structural analysis of Rowling-Galbraith’s latest effort. To show my hand in advance, I’m pretty sure the author’s ring writing in the Parts as well as the book as a whole explains in large part the chief criticism of the more recent Strike novels made by newspaper reviewers and Amazon readers alike.

For more please visit The Hogwarts Professor Substack Part A here and part B here. You do not need to subscribe to read, but if you choose to, subscription is free.

Part Two Parallels, Eight’s Latch, Turn, and Turtle-Back Lines, Answers to Robin’s Questions, Guesses about Strike’s Epiphany, and the Pizza Mystery

It just gets better and better! Running Graves’ Part Eight turned up the excitement with a Papa J – Cormoran Strike confrontation, a car chase and shooter, and, as Robin says to Cormoran after the Brewster-Edensor dialogue, “Loads of information!” In this post I’ll be laying out the larger ring parallels between Parts Two and Eight, sharing my thoughts about Part Eight’s individual ring elements, and then giving my last guesses about whodunnit before all is revealed in Part Nine. If the sun isn’t up before I’m done, I’ll put up some thoughts about Rowling’s “meaning in the middle” and other points that this long look at the structure highlight.

For more please visit The Hogwarts Professor Substack. You do not need to subscribe to read, but if you choose to, subscription is free. Look out for the Part Nine conclusion tomorrow!