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.
Beginning with Troubled Blood and the posts written here about the ghosts populating that Rowling-Galbraith’s Strike-Ellacott novel (see here and here), we’ve realized that every book Rowling writes has ghosts influencing the characters more or less obviously, whose appearance is almost never spotted by those not looking specifically for the hints and suggestions of spectral activity. Hallmarked Man won’t be an exception, I think, so I hope serious readers will share the ghosts they see shaping character choices in Strike8. Jump in!
The wraith of Ted Nancarrow is explicitly giving Strike guidance from beyond the veil in Part One.
Voices of the dead – The epigraph from ch 22 is from a poem called “the medium”.
Robin meets Albie in the Lord Tennyson Pub. (Alfred Tennyson was involved in seances/spiritualism). While they’re talking Robin feels the table vibrating – one of Albie’s legs seems to be bouncing up and down – which is a Medium’s trick. Albie is trying to talk for the apparently dead man, Rupert.
In the end when Decima finally talks to him she says it’s like talking to his ghost, like he’s already dead.
When Strike has it out with Sasha LeGard it is “as though the spectral Charlotte had drawn up a seat at the table, smiling.”
Love that Tennyson catch, Tam!