Ink Black Heart: The Strike Characters with Twitter Accounts

September 19, 2022 by Leave a Comment

Our last update to the Cormoran Strike characters that became active this summer, a pre-publication blitz of posts in 2022 time from ‘people’ as diverse as Pat Chauncey and Ciara Porter (not to mention Wolfgang the pet and the Office Sofa), was August 22nd. See Twitter Character Update for that, Nick Jeffery’s introduction to the phenomenon, Strike on Twitter – Sixteen Characters in Search of a Story, and Rowling’s engagement with the fun being had online before Ink Black Heart  was officially on sale.

Has anyone been following these accounts after the fact? Do we have evidence that they were given copies of Ink Black Heart before the public at large? Do you think it was a Rowling, Inc., publicity stunt for Serious Strikers to enjoy or a fandom effort by Zealot Tweeters who love the Rowling-Galbraith murder-romance-mysteries?

This post is a Placeholder for discussion to which we will add information as it becomes available. To find this conversation quickly in future, click on ‘Ink Black Heart Discussion’ in the Pillar Post column at the upper left of the home page and scroll down to the ‘Twitter Characters’ link. Cheers!

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Twitter

Rowling Contrasts Trans Activists in Head-Coverings with Iranian Feminists

September 18, 2022 by Leave a Comment

Rowling tweeted a condemnation of Radical Gender Extremists, the ironically named ‘Be Kind Brigade,’ who marched in protest of a scheduled talk in Brighton by Kellie-Jay Keen, founder of ‘Standing For Women.’ On the thread of that post, a ‘Bogey the Bossey’ wrote, “They’re so different from these Iranian women who show real courage and don’t hide behind black masks.” This comment included a tweet-video from Masih Alinejad, an “Iranian journalist and activist,” which Rowling then re-tweeted herself:

If you’re interested in the details, there’s much more on this tweet and the event in Brighton in the online Daily Mail:  ‘JK Rowling condemns masked pro trans mob after violent clashes in Brighton at ‘Let Women Speak’ event.’ My thoughts are mostly about Rowling’s use of her twitter social media platform post-publication of Ink Black Heart and its relationship with the implicit messages of her books. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Twitter

Rowling Asked About Parallel Series Idea

September 17, 2022 by 3 Comments

The Rowling Library earlier this week published an article by Oxford Research Fellow Beatrice Groves called ‘Harry Potter and the Ink Black Prince.’ In it she discussed Rowling’s latest novel, The Ink Black Heart, in light of the Parallel Series Idea (PSI), a theory discussed here beginning in 2014 that argues Rowling-Galbraith is writing the Strike series as deliberate echoes of her Harry Potter novels. You can read about these playful parallels and echoing between each of the first six Strike mysteries at the HogwartsProfessor Pillar Post on the subject and the page on the Heart-Prince touches.

More after the jump about PSI and the question posed to Rowling about whether it is a valid theory.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Ring Composition, Twitter

Ink Black Heart: Does Rowling Tip Her Hand About the Killer with a Hermes Reference and ‘Prince’ Parallels?

September 16, 2022 by 1 Comment

Evan Willis is a HogwartsProfessor faculty member with a special expertise in Rowling’s hermetic artistry. He was in communication with me throughout his first-reading of Ink Black Heart so I can testify that the journey he describes below is not something he made up after the fact. His long-awaited write-up of his thoughts on Strike6 exceeds even my very high expectations and it establishes I think his theory that Mercury markers are keys to Identifying Rowling murder mystery killers; enjoy! — John

Hours after it came out, I started on Ink Black Heart. I wanted to read it slowly so that I had adequate opportunity to test, theorize, and predict, and so only got to the end of it early this week. I sent off a couple comments and e-mails as I read indicating where my line of reasoning had gone so that I might document my testing, while trying my best to avoid spoilers (this site, along with Twitter, became very dangerous to go anywhere near).

My conclusions? That our parallel series idea still has deep predictive and explanatory power (Half-Blood Prince parallels are extraordinarily strong here), that the important Half-Blood Prince references are where it connected back to Philosopher’s Stone (pointing to a 1-6 connectivity in both series), and that Rowling has subtly indicated the identity of the killer in each of these novels very early on by inclusion of a passing reference to a mythological character with direct ties to the figure of Hermes in the near vicinity of their first appearance.

Join me after the jump for discussion of how I arrived at all three of these conclusions — and how I just missed identifying the killer before Strike and Robin did.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Agatha Christie, Cormoran Strike, Evan Willis, Ring Composition

The Ink Black Heart: Parallels to The Cuckoo’s Calling.

September 15, 2022 by 4 Comments

As John has pointed out, there are expected Book 1- Book 5 parallels in the Harry Potter series. As such, we went looking for connections between The Cuckoo’s Calling and Troubled Blood. But, with 5-6 flip, we ought to expect some connections between CC and The Ink Black Heart as well as between IBH and CoE,  Do we find them?

A few I can think of:

  1. The murder victim is a female former foster child who earned a large amount of money at a young age (Lula through her modeling career, Edie through the cartoon). Both were on the verge of signing a lucrative new contract when they died.
  2. Both murder victims had money-grubbing uncles who wanted little to do with their niece until the niece got rich.
  3. Both murder victims had druggie boyfriends with whom they had recently broken up (Evan Duffield, Josh Blay).
  4. The murderer had responsibilities for a seriously ill parent.
  5. A child-related conflict destroys Strike’s love for Charlotte (anger over the lies about her alleged pregnancy (or abortion or miscarriage?) in CC; unwillingness to protect the twins from Jago in IBH.)
  6. A victim’s missing cell phone is an important clue to the case.

What others can our readers come up with?

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Louise Freeman, Ring Composition