The ‘True Book’ in Troubled Blood: Hypothesis, Premises, and Overview

As promised last Saturday, I hope in the weeks prior to Ink Black Heart‘s publication to write an introductory review of the ‘True Book’ pages Rowling inserted into Troubled Blood. There are several glaring gaps even after two years spent discussing The Presence’s longest and most challenging novel; the most egregious fail is the absence of serious exploration of the book’s most unique quality, which is to say, the author-illustrated pages of its primary embedded text.

Today’s post is an overview of the series to follow in which I will take a closer look at each of these pages; I call this an “introductory review” because my primary aim is not writing anything definitive but to foster discussion of Bill Talbot’s True Book and Rowling’s purpose in deploying it the way she has.

Let’s start with my working hypothesis, several corollary ideas, and my argument’s three premises.

Hypothesis: The true meaning of Troubled Blood is in the ‘True Book’ pages and illustrations, Rowling’s deliberately covert presentation of what she wants the very serious reader to see and understand, the archetypal and spiritual dimension of the novel hidden in this hidden-in-plain-sight text, all of which eludes the mechanistic and psychological approaches to it deployed by the Strike Detective Agency partners.

Corollary 1: The specific pages of the ‘True Blood’ text open up the meaning of the novel Parts in which they appear.

Corollary 2: Each includes significant pointers to Whodunnit, not just Janice Beatty.

Premise 1: The astrological chart that Talbot cast for the time and place of Margot Bamborough’s fictional disappearance is accurate and largely determined the various characters and their relationships. Rowling did not ‘make this up’ or choose the time and place to ‘fit’ her story, which would have been next to impossible, but began with the chart and worked from there.

Premise 2: All the Tarot Card ‘readings,’ in contrast, are deliberate choices of the author to convey meaning intentionally.

Premise 3: Rowling’s illustrations for Talbot’s ‘True Book’ pages must be read in light of their organization left to right and top to bottom, which is to say ‘structurally,’ as well as with respect to the tarot and astrological symbolism chosen.

That’s a lot I know. Rather than explain each or any of these ideas in any detail, though, which I’ll be using and exploring in coming posts, DV, I want here just to review the True Book pages we are given in Troubled Blood. There are six, seven if you include the fragment in coded writing that was dropped in the Metropolitan Police file for unknown reasons. Let’s begin there.

(1) The Pitman Shorthand: Sadly, my computer and internet abilities are insufficient to capture and post here a picture of the Pitman shorthand note that DI Talbot left in the Metropolitan Police file (the failing was not for lack of trying, I hope you’ll trust me). It is on page 149 in the hardcover first edition, near the end of chapter 14, the last chapter of Part Two (see discussion of chapters 13 and 14 here). To my knowledge, no one familiar with Pitman shorthand has, two years after publication, confirmed or disputed Pat’s translation of the secret message. It reads: And that is the last of them, the twelfth, and the circle will be closed upon finding the tenth—Capricorn—Baphomet. Transcribe in the true book. This message is repeated in large part at the top of the third True Book entry.

(2) The Astrological Chart: In chapter 21, Strike shows Robin the True Book to show her “exactly how crazy Talbot was” (240). She focuses on the chart with a goat’s head illustration as its center, a symbol taken from a Crowley inspired Tarot Deck card, and notes the “astrological signs.” Strike figures out that “He’s calculated the full horoscope for the moment he thought [Bamborough] was abducted.” Rowling’s astonishing illustration and copious notes and annotations are on the page facing this discovery (241). Strike spends three weeks deciphering the chart and identifying which characters are represented by which star signs (cf. pages 320-325, 332, and 337-338 for his notes). Robin takes a turn at interpreting it later, with special attention on asteroids and the Place of Fortune, the latter inspired by a different page. It’s fair to say that this page from the True Book is the subject of the closest scrutiny of any by the detectives.

(3) The Celtic Cross Tarot Card Spread: The single most overlooked page appears only eight pages later (249) and, though it is reprinted in full, it is the heading that captures Strike’s attention (247) because it is resonant with the Pitman shorthand message. “Twelfth (Pisces) found. Therefore AS EXPECTED killer is Capricorn.” Strike realizes from this clue how to unlock the horoscope: “An idea now occurred to him: those strange, unexplained dates with crosses beside them on all the male witnesses’ statements.” Talbot used the horoscope to narrow down his suspects by inserting them into the chart using their star signs. Strike notes the Celtic Cross — it reminds him of his mother’s facility with the cards (funny, of course, when the author, the fictional character’s create is the one skilled in tarot card reading) — but dismisses the set: “He had never, however, seen the cards given astrological meanings before, and wondered whether this, too, had been Talbot’s own invention.” Charlotte sexts him a naked picture and Strike never returns to this page.

(4) The Horned Triple Triangle: The only True Book page in Part 4, the central chapters of Troubled Blood, is the first of the three illustrated pages with embedded three card readings. It being the first and it being ‘central’ suggests that it may be the most important, something of a key to the entire novel. Robin refers to it several times as the “horns page,” and focuses on the Satchwell notes in the bottom left of the illustration: “‘same as AC. Same as AC. AND DON’T FORGET LS connection.’ To add to the confusion, the mysterious Schmidt kept correcting signs, although he’d allowed Satchwell to keep his original sign of Aries” (535-536). It is consequent to this reading that Robin is inspired to think that Schmidt may have used a fourteen constellation zodiac. Robin before this revelation has noticed that on the “horns page” “Talbot had dwelled on the three horned signs of the zodiac: Capricorn, Aries and Taurus.” Other than referring to this with respect to Wilma Bayliss, the page is not mentioned again by Strike or Ellacott.

(5) The Black Skeleton with Scythe: Robin draws the disgusted Strike’s attention to this page in Part 5 to talk about the Part of Fortune. She tells him point black to “Ignore all the weird tarot drawings,” a command that was almost certainly unnecessary for Strike but which should draw our attention to them. Strike does note the first, however, and refers to it in his final confrontation with Janice Beatty as evidence that Talbot was on to her. The ankh on the page should have cued readers, if not the skeptical detectives, to the importance of the Athorns’ apartment (632).

(6) The Whore of Babalon: Strike does not look at this page until Anna Phipps and Kim Sullivan have signed off on the case. 

Strike had never given Talbot’s final jottings more than cursory attention, partly because his patience had run out by the time he got there, partly they were among the most shambolic and incoherent parts of the notes. Tonight, though, he had a melancholy reason for examining the last page of Talbot’s notebook, because Strike, too, had come to the end of the case. So he examined Talbot’s drawing of the demon he believed he’d conjured before the ambulance came to take him away: the spirit of Margot Bamborough, returned from some astral plane to haunt him in the form of Babalon, the Mother of Abominations. (773, 775)

It confirms for him the “coincidences” that had struck him on Good Friday, which are critical to forming his theory that Janice is a poisoner. Rowling-Galbraith does not spell out what in the picture connects with his idea, and the picture, easily the most disturbing of the True Book pages, does not give up its embedded clues to the casual reader, who at this point is headed to the finish with all energy and without time to study a madman’s picture of a blood-drinking, crowned, naked woman with fangs.

(7) The Very First Page of Talbot’s True Book: Strike and Robin, having just hung up on Gloria Conti after her soul-baring phone call with them, are in the office and Strike is in his final, signature trance before solving the case. Robin is frustrated that he will not share the “coincidences” he has noted, but knows better than to interrupt his meditation and refusal to share (Robin as Bea Groves has noted here takes on the role of the reader). She picks up the True Book as inspired distraction:

The very first page of Bill Talbot’s notebook began with untidy jottings of what Robin knew to be genuine evidence and observations. It was the most coherent part of the notes but the first pentagrams appeared at the very bottom of the page, as did the first astrological observation.

(Theo? MALE?) white van speeding Aylesbury St away from Clerkenwell Green. Two women struggling by phone boxes, smaller in raincoat, taller in rainhat, seems unsteady on feet, then VAN speeding away from Clerkenwell Green. (Jupiter) is currently retrograde in (Pisces) meaning planet of OBJECTIVE TRUTH in sign of ILLUSION and FANTASY (838)

Robin catches the discrepancy in witness descriptions of the two women which she breaks Strike’s reverie to share with him. This moves him to think about the phone boxes — and solve the case. As important as that was, I think the “meaning” of Jupiter retrograde in Pisces may be more important, at least fopr the reader trying to grasp the place of Talbot’s occult investigation within the mechanistic approaches of the Met and the Strike Detective Agency.

I hope in the remaining three weeks before Ink Black Heart’s publication to post about each of these pages. Today I’d really appreciate your thoughts on my hypothesis and premises. Hold off on your interpretations of the True Book pages for now, though, so we can focus the conversation on them on the threads following the posts devoted to each.