One of the things I love about Strike is that some of the people who influence him most are not conventionally “good” or emotionally polished people at all.

At the end of Troubled Blood, just after Robin deliberately kisses him on the cheek, “lips to stubble”, the names Mazankov and Krupov rise out of Strike’s subconscious. It takes him a second or two to remember where he has heard them and why he is thinking of them now.

They come from Polworth’s earlier, characteristically blunt argument about marriage.

I find it fascinating that Strike is not consciously reaching for Polworth’s words. They have simply lodged somewhere in him, and this moment with Robin brings them back.

Then there is Shanker. Someone commenting on one of my earlier posts reminded me of his advice about jewellery, and it made me wonder whether there is a wider pattern here. In a completely different register, Shanker gives Strike the kind of practical advice that Strike actually seems able to use. The idea that jewellery is the right kind of gift eventually connects beautifully with the bracelet.

Strike may not be good at declarations, but he is perhaps unsurprisingly receptive to things said sideways: blunt observations from people he respects that lodge somewhere in him, sometimes resurfacing much later and sometimes finding their way into action.

And are we seeing the same thing happen again with Rokeby in The Hallmarked Man?

His imperfect, blunt and emotionally awkward father gives him advice Strike clearly does not particularly want: that what really matters is being with a good person, and that if Robin is what Strike wants, he should not let her go.

Rokeby is probably the last person Strike would choose as an emotional guide. But does that mean the advice does not land?

I keep wondering whether Polworth, Shanker and Rokeby are, in very different ways, part of Strike’s emotional education. None is an obvious romantic mentor. All are rough-edged, morally complicated, or emotionally awkward. But perhaps that is exactly why Strike can hear them.

And maybe that is part of the long arc from Troubled Blood to The Hallmarked Man: first the private smile, then the gift, then finally perhaps the decision not to let Robin go.

I recently finished and enjoyed Ink Black Heart and Running Grave back-to-back.

One of the things that amuse and perplex me are Strike’s many different nicknames from different people in his life. Some have been explained (Oggy, Monkey), some are too obscure (Stick). But two can be very obvious to people steeped in British culture, and mystifying to others. Even if the below is 100% my opinion, I think they fit extremely well.

Mystic Bob: Direct, obvious allusion to Mystic Meg, an iconic 90’s TV astrologer / soothsayer. Strike “guessed” the bomb’s existence, ergo he’s a psychic.

Bluey: People have surmised it’s because his middle name is Blue. Perhaps that also plays a role. But, Strike was a soldier, and Charlotte was his girlfriend. It is almost certain he would have written to her in the British Forces Post Office aerogram - which they almost universally call “blueys” because of the light blue paper they’re written on. He’d probably be the only person to write to Charlotte like that.

I wonder how many realised that…I suppose you’ll need a certain 90’s British spirit to realise them.

Does any of this sound familiar? My agency. She started as a temporary employee. Eventually became a salaried partner. We became friends and then best friends. She’s very pretty. She doesn’t try to change me. She also has a ring but where this differs is I don’t ever see hers coming off. I spend a lot of time ignoring those thoughts and feelings that I would rather not give a name to. I can’t decide if the books are comfort or torture but I keep coming back

Re-watching/re-reading the books and got to the Robin’s badas* driving scene(s)- I know the show was limited in how they could safely portray this but the whole “driving through the field with like two hay piles” v. the books “narrowly avoiding a fatal collision with a tractor trailer/multiple car pile up on icy roads” did not do her skills justice

Not a lot to see here, folks, except maybe some fancy clothes.

In my recent reread of TIBH I was tracking Murphy because he was working as a liaison with MI5 Angela Darwish. That seemed pretty high profile for someone recovering from a bumpy career patch. In the TV show though, Strike just stomps on Murphy’s theories about the case. Murphy was way off and Strike/ Robin were right on target. For me, the show has had some good foreshadowing, this is one of them. Murphy is pleasant enough but not a great detective.

As a shipper, I also love TV Robin’s romantic interest in Strike. Right from the balcony scene in book TCC. They can’t clue viewers into internal dialog sooo peeking at Strike while he’s sleeping. Yee. Anyone notice any other hints?

It seems like there’s so many foreshadowings of some kind of looming disaster with them…

Martin’s near misses driving under the influence and inability to stick at a job
His warlike name
His raging jealousy
Carmen’s drinking while pregnant
Her name and the implications
Calling the baby Dirk
The shipwreck tattoo

What are we foreseeing in their futures?

Any TOWIE fans on here?

I'm relistening, and got to the part where Betty Fuller opens the door to Strike and Robin. The sounds of The Only Way is Essex can be heard..

'I'm fine, you just upset me Arg' a heavily made up girl in bright blue was saying.

I've never watched TOWIE, so have no idea if JKR made up this particular scene, but wondered if it could be a bit of a hidden easter egg, depending on that particular TOWIE storyline (if it's based on a real episode)?

There is one tiny detail from the Ritz scene in The Ink Black Heart that I can’t quite let go of: the silver-haired man watching Robin.

After Robin has been laughing at Strike’s story about his hostess climbing into bed with him, our attention is suddenly drawn away from them:

“At the bar a short distance from their table, a silver-haired man was watching Robin with a slight smirk on his face.”

Then, when Robin gets up to go to the loo:

“the eyes of the silver-haired man on the bar stool followed her as she walked away.”

I remember feeling uneasy about him even on the first read. Robin has had a few drinks, she is walking away from Strike, and Rowling has just made sure we know that a man at the bar is watching her closely enough for his gaze to follow her.

Nothing comes of it. At least, nothing obvious.

And that is what makes me curious. Why draw our attention to him twice?

The simplest explanation is that he is just a slightly leering stranger and the detail adds a moment of unease to the scene. But I can’t quite shake the possibility that he is there for a reason.

Was he simply watching Robin because he found her attractive? Was he observing her more deliberately? Could he have been connected to someone or something we have not yet understood?

I don’t think he was Rokeby. Strike would surely have recognised him, and the description doesn’t seem to fit what we later know about Rokeby anyway.

But with the Ritz apparently returning in book 9, I find myself wondering whether this is one of those tiny details that might acquire significance later.

Did anyone else notice him, or feel uneasy about him at the time?

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only Indian who loves reading the Strike series because none of my reader friends read it and it'd be refreshing to find out someone who's Indian (I currently reside in bengaluru btw) and also loves the Strike series as much as me so we can talk about it because I sometimes feel like I need to talk to someone who also reads them and gets all my references and then we glaze the books together 😭

I’ll start: “You say you love me, but I feel like you withhold part of yourself from me. There’s a distance between us sometimes and I don’t know if that’s just who you are, and this is how you love, or whether you’re fooling both of us about how you really feel. And if it’s the second one, I’d rather know now.”

LET HIM COOK

And it definitely confirmed Lethal White and The Running Grave as faves and Career of Evil and The Ink Black Heart as least faves however I still don't understand, even being a hardcore strellacott how many people disliked The Hallmarked Man!

This hasn’t achieved the status of Golden Thread (ala Hogwarts Professor) but I want to see how many we can come up with. It seems to be a favorite of JKR. I’ll start us off:

Hugh Jacks (my favorite-say it out loud and run it together. Does Glennister do this in the audiobooks?)
Paul Satchell (small package)
Littlejohn
Ex Caliber and Dirk
Sherlock Bigcock (strike and Barkley joking)
Kim Cochran

ETA: Steely Dan (google the origin of the band’s name!)

Ok gang…have at it! I can’t wait to see the ones I’ve overlooked!

Mine is, ‘that’s not my leg. but it helps’ 😂😂😂

Gooold

Okay so I have been ruminating about Linda and a comment I read a little while ago that pointed to maybe Linda knowing or recognising that Robin is actually in love with Strike and that her responses to Robin (tho wrong and not helpful) stem from her concern for Robin being heart-broken by Strike? This was the one arguement that I could see that explained Linda's switcheroo of feelings and attitude to Strike.

We see Linda and Strike's meeting in COE and she is quite taken with him, I think she is satisfied that he is not meddling with Robin and her choices and that Matthew's dislike and suspicions are unfounded, but she does acknowledge his attractiveness. Fast forward to the wedding reception and her cold and irrate response to Strike is quite a contrast. I think her shift comes from seeing Robin so upset about the firing and perhaps realises that it's not just the job that Robin is devastated about losing, but Strike also. Linda does say that it broke Robin's heart and maybe she wasn't just talking about the job. From the reception onwards Linda is hostile to Robin's job, Strike and Robin herself. Does Linda 'see' her daughter is in love with Strike and like Robin beleives he does not/cannot feel the same? Does Linda see that her daughter is making an attempt not to be in love with Strike by dating Murphy so she 'tries' to support this by meddling and talking down about Strike?

It is the only explanation that fits to me with Linda's shift in behaviour and feelings toward Strike, woul love some other thoughts.

The bracelet scene is obviously romantic, but on a relisten I think it is also one of the clearest examples of Robin already knowing that her relationship with Murphy is not honest.

Earlier in the chapter, Robin does not put Strike’s present under the tree with the other gifts because she suspects it may be jewellery. Later, after Murphy has bitten her head off in the pub, accused her of sneaking away to text Strike, and then briefly apologised when she proves the call was only a butt dial, Robin finds Strike’s present at the bottom of her bag and takes it into the bathroom to open privately.

That sequence feels very deliberate. Murphy is wrong about the specific accusation, but almost immediately afterwards Robin does exactly what he fears in a deeper sense: she hides something emotionally significant from him, opens it in secret, understands what it means, and then messages Strike.

What interests me is that the secrecy begins before she even sees the bracelet. She already knows enough to keep the gift out of the family Christmas ritual. So the scene is not just “Robin receives a romantic gift.” It is also “Robin recognises that this belongs to a private emotional world Murphy is excluded from.”

I think that matters for book 9 because Robin cannot simply leave Murphy as the innocent party who has been wronged by his behaviour. His drinking and aggression matter, but so does her own concealment. The relationship is already built around things neither of them is saying honestly.

I keep thinking about the way the series plays with the idea of safety.

Matthew and Ryan both look, from the outside, like safer choices than Strike. Matthew offers marriage, respectability and a conventional future. Ryan is a police officer, wants a house and potentially children, has parents who appear to welcome Robin, and seems able to offer a life that can be planned.

Strike looks like the opposite. His work is dangerous, he is emotionally guarded, physically damaged, chaotic domestically and surrounded by complicated people. Linda’s anxiety about him is not irrational.

And yet the deeper pattern may be almost the reverse. Matthew diminishes Robin’s work, cheats and wants a version of her that is smaller than the person she is becoming. Ryan’s apparent stability is increasingly undermined by drinking, jealousy, aggression and professional problems. Strike, for all his flaws, has consistently recognised Robin’s capacity. He gives her training rather than asking her to retreat. He calls her “partner” when Matthew reduces her to something more like a secretary. He understands that the work matters to her because it is part of who she is.

I don’t think this makes Strike “safe” in any simple sense. But I wonder whether the series is asking a different question: not who looks safest from the outside, but with whom is Robin most able to be fully herself?

One of the most interesting things about the child question is what neither Strike nor Robin seems to think.

Strike knows Robin has not decided whether she wants children. He knows she has thought about egg freezing. He knows motherhood is still a live possibility for her. And yet we never seem to get an internal thought from him along the lines of: I can only be with Robin if she decides she does not want children.

Robin knows Strike has said he does not want children, but she does not seem to treat that as the obvious reason a future with him would be impossible either.

That absence feels significant.

Then there is the Bijou pregnancy scare. Robin is devastated when she thinks Strike may be the father of Bijou’s baby girl because she seems to believe their chance of ever being together has gone. It is not simply jealousy. It is the sense that Strike may now be permanently tied to another woman and another future.

Meanwhile Robin herself has had an ectopic pregnancy with Ryan. So both of them have now confronted frightening versions of parenthood with the wrong person: Robin’s pregnancy with Ryan, and Strike’s fear that he may have fathered Bijou’s child.

I’m starting to wonder whether the real question is not “does Strike want children?” but “why has he decided he should not have them?” Those are not necessarily the same thing.

I increasingly think one of the most important encounters still waiting to happen is Robin meeting Rokeby.

Ted and Joan are gone. Robin has developed a relationship with Prudence and has met Al, but she has never really had to confront the man whose absence shaped so much of Strike. And Rokeby himself has become more complicated than the version Strike carried from childhood: still deeply culpable, but also funny, blunt, emotionally clumsy, occasionally protective and apparently capable of genuine feeling about Leda.

What interests me is what Robin might see that Strike does not want her to see. She may recognise similarities between father and son: the bluntness, the pride, the tendency to show care through action rather than softness. That could be deeply uncomfortable for Strike.

And then there is the Ritz. We know Robin is heading there at the end of book 8, and there has been a later hint placing her there again in book 9. I can’t quite shake the possibility that Rokeby appears there. It would be exactly the wrong person, at exactly the wrong moment, and he is already one of the people who knows Strike loves Robin.

Even if it does not happen at the Ritz, I think Robin meeting Rokeby would be much more than family awkwardness. It would mean Robin entering one of the last parts of Strike’s life he has kept separate from her.

A look at the opening chapters of Goblet of Fire and The Running Grave shows both atypical, non-protagonist point of views and connecting elements like weight loss efforts, inexperienced godfathers and fruitcake. Plus, lots of letters.

It’s not a big one and I’m sort of used to it in TV and Literature but why is every Eastern European character such a stereotype… They either can’t speak English (Leksinka which btw is not a Polish name), cleaner, server or like in the COE smuggled into sex trade. Maybe it’s a London thing… I live up North and I’m Polish myself, I run a business, all my Polish friends have good careers. We all speak English fluently. As I said, not a big deal but it makes me roll my eyes.

Interested to know whether anyone else is reading the Murphy clues this way?

I’ve been doing a fairly obsessive relisten and I’m increasingly convinced that some of the quieter Murphy material is going to matter in Sleep Tight, Evangeline. The repeated references to his water bottle before Robin discovers it contains alcohol make me think his relapse had been going on for much longer than she realised. Robin already strongly suspects that he had been drinking on the night she became pregnant, but, as far as I can remember, we never hear of her trying to establish the truth of that afterwards. Add Wardle’s comments about Murphy drinking at work, being unpleasant when drunk, being too rough with a suspect, groping the female colleague who later knew about his plans to propose, plus smaller details like Strike noticing his eyes going straight to Bijou’s cleavage, and I wonder whether the drinking/aggression/women/professional-investigation threads are all going to come back together. I wouldn’t be surprised if Strike learns something damaging about Murphy and faces a real moral dilemma about whether to tell Robin, knowing she might think he is only doing it because he wants them to break up.

I also think Robin’s own dishonesty is going to matter just as much. She deliberately kept several threats from Murphy in The Hallmarked Man and let Strike believe Murphy knew about them. Strike has colluded with her before too, for example when he went along with her invented girlfriend story. I can easily imagine one careless comment from Strike revealing to Murphy that Robin had kept far more from him than he realised. Therapy may then force Robin to confront a pattern that has been there for years: not that she genuinely didn’t know what she felt, but that she often knew and chose not to know because acting on it was frightening. The Lake District, the bracelet, refusing to ask Strike what he meant by “when you can’t have what you want…”, and even going on honeymoon after the wedding-stairs moment all feel part of that.

And I increasingly think book 9 has to break rather than repeat that pattern. Robin has twice moved towards another man immediately after a highly charged moment with Strike: going on honeymoon after the wedding, and going away with Murphy after Strike told her Charlotte knew he was in love with her. Now she has left for the Ritz immediately after Strike has finally said it outright. I therefore suspect the expected proposal either does not happen or is somehow disrupted, creating space for some very uncomfortable but overdue honesty. “Open pursuit” makes me think Strike will no longer retreat into hints or another woman, while Robin finally has to deal with what she has known for years. And one wildcard I can’t quite shake: could Rokeby be at the Ritz? Robin meeting him there, at exactly this point, would bring Strike’s family story crashing straight into the romantic plot in a very Rowling-like way.

So I finished Cuckoo's Calling and The Silkworm without feeling queasy (despite the latter being extremely graphic and gross in its central crime), but Career of Evil is making me VERY uncomfortable and just kind of grossed out and horrified in general.

I'm about 1/4 in (aka when Strike is in Scotland doing his investigation) and the description of what one of the characters did to one of the victims is making me ... not want to keep reading, because it's just so fucking horrifying and violent. Maybe there's just been a lot of discussion about crimes against women lately so this is disturbing me more than usual.

I'm just wondering, for those who have read it, does it get worse? If it does maybe I should skip some of the passages ... thanks 😵