It’s a long-standing custom at Hogwarts Professor to put up posts for Serious Readers to share their finds on specific topics in the week following a new Rowling book’s publication. This Quiet week of little posting — because most folks are trying to find time to finish a ginormous tome while working a day job or studying for papers and exams and are staying away from online discussion of the books — merits an alternative outlet for those who read straight-through and want to share their first thoughts.
I have put up ten posts on the day of publication with specific subjects of interest to our global audience and an index post for easy access to each of those subjects. None have spoiler alerts because the comment threads of every one will be loaded with Hallmarked Man content and conversation. Caveat Lector.
In our most extended Hogwarts Professor review of a single Golden Thread to date, I laid out every Pregnancy Trap I could find in Rowling’s novels, script, and screenplays: Pregnancy Traps in Every Rowling Story: The Golden Thread of Coercive Love. The unavoidable but still surprising conclusion from that comprehensive survey was that it is a very unusual Rowling or Galbraith novel that doesn’t have a pregnancy trap at its foundation or as key to its plot. If you listen to the Rowling Studies podcast on this subject, ‘Pregnancy Traps’ in the Works of J. K. Rowling: The Golden Thread of Coercive Love that Runs Through Everything She has Written, you’ll be ready if there is a pregnancy trap sprung or revealed in Hallmarked Man.
Ready — and eager to discuss it below. Go for it!
I’ve only read Part One so far. We’ve obviously had Robin’s abortive pregnancy, and discussions of freezing eggs and having children.
Bijou has also been referred to a lot, and so I wonder if her pregnancy and Strike’s paternity will be playing a part at some point.
I’m also a bit worried about Robin keeping her hospitalisation and the reason for it secret from Strike. I think this book might be an Ickabog parallel, and that book emphasises the damage that can be done by untruths.
Didn’t we predict Murphy may use some sort of pregnancy trap with Robin? I don’t think he purposely messed up with the condom but does the fact he had likely been drinking make it a defacto trap? Was it ever resolved whether he HAD been drinking that night? Robin felt he had lied about how early he started drinking. He was always more violent or out of control when drinking and the fact he was too rough during the arrest may be evidence he had started earlier then he admitted.