Troubled Blood ‘Listen Along,’ Part Two: Premises for Reading Talbot’s True Book

🎧 What do you think about Strike and his aversion to getting romantically involved with Robin?
🎧 Has the interview with Oonagh revealed anything you find interesting? Have you changed your mind about any of the suspects?

— Robert Galbraith (@RGalbraith) July 30, 2022

Robert Galbraith’s twitter feed is sponsoring a ‘Listen Along’ for new readers of Troubled Blood. Last Saturday they posted two questions about the novels first fourteen chapters, Parts 1 and 2 of seven, and today, as you can see above, they’ve put up two more, these about chapters 15 to 27. That’s a bit of a weird break, as Part 3 closes at chapter 30, but I guess they have plans for a set of Christmas-themed questions for week three in this series.

If the aim was to generate online conversation among new listeners, the project in its first week was a fail. I was the only person who tweeted a response to their questions and my notes there were for re-readers to come join the conversation here about Troubled Blood‘s first two Parts. That pitch, it seems, and my seven posts here last week about Strike 5’s first fourteen chapters were also a failure, at least with respect to generating conversation; only one reader shared her thoughts about what I was writing all week.

I’ve decided, consequently, not to continue my chapter by chapter review of Troubled Blood, as much as I enjoyed writing those posts. @RGalbraith may have to continue playing a losing hand, but I can move on to more fruitful use of my time here. I realized last night while writing up some thoughts on Talbot’s ‘True Book’ that this bizzarro embedded text is the single most neglected aspect of Rowling-Galbraith’s longest novel and that, if I’m going to explore its depths and various meanings, I’d best do it before Ink Black Heart is upon us, a publication date only one month away.

My working premises for a reading of Talbot’s True Book as I begin are that (1) the book is indeed Rowling’s ‘True Book,’ her covert message about what happened top Margot Bamborough and who killed her, (2) Talbot’s tarot card spreads, the visible Celtic Cross lay-out and the three card spreads hidden in the various illustrations, are not random but Rowling’s deliberate choices to convey her meaning, and (3), in contrast, the astrological chart drawn for the moment and place of Bamborough’s disappearance, guided the choice of star signs for characters and their relationship. This last point is an especially difficult one to grasp or believe, I know, but the alternative, that she wrote the book and then found a time and place to match her story is preposterous.

So, next week, a close look at Rowling’s illustrated True Book inside Troubled Blood, an embedded text that may be The Presence’s most successfully covert bit of writing, a book within the book the characters struggle to understand but the readers of Strike 5 have thus far accepted at face value or at the level of Strike and Robin’s readings. I hope you’ll join me in Trelawney’s classroom for a reading of Rowling’s tarot card spreads and riffs on the Crowley-inspired deck illustrations!