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.
The most popular post in these Placehoilders historically has been the ‘Find the Gaffes’ piece. Team Rowling never fails to find all the mistakes in continuity, dates, ages, names, and character experiences in her books pre-publication. HogPro All-Pros do them the great service of spotting those face-palm mistakes and sharing them here for correction in the paperback and subsequent hardcover editions (there’s no correcting the audiobooks, alas).
Have at it!
I’ve just finished in the wee small hours of this morning. My, what a ride! Here are the gaffes/errors I caught:
– Not an error per se, but the narrator introduced Valentine Longcaster as “one of the closest friends of the late Charlotte Campbell” (p. 9) when he had been introduced previously as “one of Charlotte’s stepbrothers” (IBH p. 23). This apparent discrepancy caused quote a bit of confusion for me before it was explained a few chapters later.
– The Universal Humanitarian Church is once named the “United Humanitarian Church” (p. 22).
– The reference to OnlyFans in chapter 33 (p. 269) felt anachronistic to me, as I don’t remember ever hearing about the website before the pandemic era. And sure enough, according to Wikipedia (citing a New York Times article), the website didn’t launch until November 2016. Therefore, Sofia – who was murdered in June 2016 – could not have been a prolific OnlyFans poster. Sofia’s supposed OnlyFans account is referenced several further times throughout the book. Based on data from Google Trends, it seems incredibly unlikely that Strike and Robin would have readily known what OnlyFans was in late 2016/early 2017. (https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2016-01-01%202025-09-01&geo=GB&q=onlyfans&hl=en-US)
– “DNA test” on p. 749 should probably just be “paternity test” as DNA testing was not available in the 1970s. (I believe this one has also occurred in the series previously.)
– On p. 808, the line should read “Strike looked up at Robin and said” with “and” being missing from the original text. (I caught two or three other typographical errors earlier in the book that I didn’t write down – I think all were cases of missing or repeated words in a sentence.)
Any gaffes/errors aside, I found The Hallmarked Man to be an engrossing, suspenseful, and profitable read. I’m looking forward to thinking, reading, and writing more about it in the coming weeks!
Ignoring Justin’s comment for now as I’m only at the end of Part Two. I didn’t notice any typos or misprints at all in Part One, but caught a few in Part Two:
p89 Audi, vide – Strike translated this the wrong way around, as, “See, hear” rather than, “Hear, see”.
p104 “and wouldn’t had understood”
p149 “I’m going to have to go to.”
p157 TBD instead of TBC
p198 “Was McGee was still working here”
I spotted another typo, p491 “weak leak” instead of “weak link”. Such a key phrase too.
In addition to the references to OnlyFans, I thought Lord Branfoot saying “woke” might have been a bit anachronistic in 2017. The word was starting to spread as slang around that time, but I don’t think it would have crossed over to white aristocracy. Apparently it’s pejorative use arose around 2019.
Someone else spotted this not me but in ch 106 Malcolm Truman is called Malcolm Turnbull instead – he is an ex pm of Australia
I think that there is an error in Strikes knowledge of the law on page 854, it’s a shame an editor didn’t pick up on this. ‘Not proven’ is currently a possible verdict in Scottish law only, but it isn’t a possibility in England and Wales.
I decided to go back and begin the series again after several readings of THM as I love listening to it as I walk.
Two things popped up already in the early chapters :
1) Robin needs to go into the landing bathroom to get water to make tea. In later books there is a sink in the actual office – remember the scene where Morris comes up behind her as she is doing the dinner dishes? Of course this is minor but…
2) I just heard Lucy telling Robin the story of Leda’s “suicide” for the first time. She said strike always thought it was her “ex husband”. Would she have referred to Whittaker as an ex? They were married when she died. Maybe Rowling changed the story she was going to write as she wrote but if we are of the conviction that Leda was truly murdered by someone and this was going to be pivotal to the at some point, I’d think this would be an important detail.
In regards to the sink: in Cuckoo’s Calling, Cormoran is said to make his camp bed “in the inner office” and then to fill the kettle “outside the glass door”. I believe we are to assume this sink is in the main office, not the bathroom on the landing.
Another bit of anachronistic language I’ve spotted to go with OnlyFans and “woke”.
In chapter 77, Robin says, ‘Don’t gaslight me, Ryan’. The widespread usage of the term “gaslight” is a relatively recent phenomenon, and was really not in common usage in 2017.
Spotted another error. Chapter 2, p74: Murphy refers to “Wild Street” instead of “Wild Court”.
Actually, Wild Street is the adjoining street to Wild Court. Ignore my last message!