Rowling Writes “Really Sad Chapter;” Who Dies in Sleep Tight Evangeline?

[Tweet url; see this for an explanation of the Greene reference; thanks to Kelly Loomis for alerting me to the tweet]

What’s the appropriate response to this writing update from Rowling?

The author of the Cormoran Strike mysteries sends out a tweet in which she writes that she has “been writing a really sad chapter that made me cry several times,” a chapter she is satisfied is “as exactly as sad as it needs to be.” The assumption is that she’s still writing the next Strike novel, one she has told her readers has the improbable title, Sleep Tight, Evangeline.

Reader response seems to be trending toward the death of either Robin or Cormoran, the characters in whose heads we experience each Strike mystery. Kelly raised the point in her note to me that we’ve speculated about Linda Ellacott’s imminent death after pulling on two Rowling Golden Threads (see ‘Lost Mother‘ and ‘Hidden Hold of Horrors‘). Which would be devestating to daughter Robin for a slew of reasons beyond love and affection.

My first thought is that there’s no explicit mention of death in the tweet. Maybe we shouldn’t go off half-cocked. It could be a break-up in a relationship, a car accident with critical injuries, or a natural disaster that destroys someone’s home.

But to be “really sad,” I agree, points to the death of a spouse or lover, a parent, or of a child, from miscarriage to accident (I’m thinking of Jack, Strike’s beloved nephew). Divorce is heavy, certainly, but I don’t think Rowling would be brought to tears by it or call it “really sad.”

She has deployed, though, the Graham Greene quotation about writers having a “splinter of ice” in their hearts previously and only, if memory serves, in reference to characters she has killed. That’s an implicit reference to the oncoming death of a major Strike character or of one that would make Strike or Robin “really sad,” pain we would feel in cathartic sympathy.

How about a look at deaths that would be earth shaking and tear-jerking? Let’s start with the story lead characters —

Rowling tweeted the ‘Psyche Ascendant’ painting after Hallmarked Man‘s publication, which, though it was meant to lift up the hearts of readers disappointed by Strike 8, sure had an alarming message. It seems to cue up Robin’s death in Sleep Tight, Evangeline. Robin’s had so many Near Death Experiences, it almost seems overdue; mythologically, psyche-ologically, and in light of the frequent foreshadowing in Strike’s repeated alarmed pleas to her to be more careful and declarations of his sure destruction by guilt if she dies on the job, we’re set up for her funeral.

Strike’s death, of course, would end the ‘Cormoran Strike Novel’ series as such, even if he haunts Strike 10 (as he surely would). That would be a grand twist, but I’m not seeing it, even if Robin takes the helm, Cordelia Gray style, in the closer to solve the mystery of her partner’s demise.

If Nephew Jack dies in Strike 9, that lines up, as noted, as a death that would fall under “really sad.” If that is in the cards, I’d guess it happens in the finale (and, based on ring correspondences and the relevant fairy tale, that Jack will more likely be responsible somehow for Uncle Cormoran’s death than die himself [by falling off the Beanstalk?]).

We know that Robin’s father is not well. If he dies, perhaps Linda dies soon after from complications of grief — or immediately after from shock — or alongside him in a car accident they have when he suffers another heart attack, this time while driving.

Or maybe Linda dies all on her own and Michael is left behind to grieve — and to share with Robin how much her daughter’s anger and neglect had broken Linda’s heart? What a hit that would be, especially if Mum dies of a heart attack. This, as noted, checks several Rowling Lake and Golden Thread boxes.

Those are my only “really sad” deaths.

Under just “sad” I’d list Lucy, Dave Polworth, people working at the Agency (Pat!), RFM, Matt (not Sarah?), the Rocking Prune, Strike’s half-siblings, his close friends the Herberts — Ilsa, Nick, and their son Benjamin…

Of course if Ilsa and Nick died in a car accident we’d have something of a connection with the ending of The Silkworm (Robin drives Nick’s father’s taxi into a building with Elizabeth Tassel in tow) and the Agency partners, as Benjamin’s godparents, might have responsibilities for the orphan. Orphans are “really sad” especially at the parents’ funeral — and Robin forced into the role of mother and Strike as father suddenly, that would be a delightful plot twist, no? Joined together as professional partners and live-in parents but not by marriage?

Whose “really sad” departure or what possible plot event that could move Rowling to tears am I missing? Why do you think Rowling felt the need to share this bit of news? Please share your thoughts in the comment boxes below!