Flips, Pentagrams and Expanded Playlists: Why did the tone we expected in Book 5 wind up in Book 6?

 Originally published: September 5, 2022 by Louise Freeman 16 Comments

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We have a lot of hypotheses about why we got such a nigredo-laden book in Strike 6.  They are:

• 5-6 flip: which supposes that Troubled Blood was originally planned as Book 6, and The Ink Black Heart as Book 5.
• The Pentagram model: which has the first five books completing the alchemical cycle and the start of a new one in Book 6.
• The Extended Playlist model: Proposed recently by Kathleen, it suggests Galbraith is splitting the last 2, or possibly 3,  books of the 7-part series into two parts. Under this model, The Ink Black Heart would be either part 6a or 5b.

I’m going to outline some of the evidence I see for 5-6 Flip based on one audiobook listen of IBH. As a refresher, recall that this model predicts 1) Career of Evil parallels, instead of or alongside parallels to The Silkworm 2) Order of the Phoenix parallels, instead or alongside those to Half-Blood Prince and 3) nigredo elements, instead or alongside albedo. Interestingly, though, one of the strongest pieces of evidence is none of these, but rather timeline- and calendar-based.

One thing has always puzzled me.  Lethal White ended in mid-September 2012.  Troubled Blood began in August 2013, almost a full year later. This was the second year-long time jump in the series. There were two good reasons for the year-long jump in the middle of LW:  1) Book 4 absolutely had to be set in the 2012 Olympics and 2) no one wanted to read about a full year of Robin trying to make herself love the Flobberworm, develop panic attacks and feel emotionally distant from Strike.

But why jump a full year between LW and TB? It would have been awesome to see Robin’s early days with Max (and Wolfgang! Sniff!), the curry nights with Nick and Ilsa, Robin’s friendship with them developing (and the dirt they dished on Charlotte), the start of the match-making attempts and the series of incompetent temps that culminated in the the decision to hire Pat. OK, we’d have to see the Flobberworm be a jerk for a year, but the rest would be worth that. Instead, that is all explained after the fact. Obviously, the historical floods of 2014 were important to the story, but as has been stated multiple times, you expect lots of rain in albedo, not nigredo books. Why not tell the nigredo story in that missing year and save the floods for albedo?

That may well have been the original plan. The Ink Black Heart started in October (2014) and finished in June (2015).  Roll the dates back 2 years (Oct 2012-June 2013) and you have a story that fits quite neatly into that missing year.  This, I think, is good evidence that the IBH story was originally meant to be told in that time period.

Second, I can definitely see the Ink Black Heart cartoon as a “text-within-a-text” as stated in Beatrice Grove’s excellent prediction post. But, to me, it doesn’t fit as well as Talbot’s True Book as an analog to either Bombyx Mori, or the Prince’s doctored text. First, those were all actual books. Second, our heroes didn’t wind up actually reading scripts or viewing the cartoon in search of clues to the killer; they instead had to search Twitter and chat rooms for what the fans were saying about the show. That gave it a very different feel to me, and had them examining many different people’s words and the social interactions embedded within the conversations, not the solo narrative of the text. The only person to seriously watch the cartoon was Robin, when she was studying for her moderator’s test, and she didn’t even get to take that.

So, if The Ink Black Heart fits into that missing year, and the main mystery element is a less satisfactory match to the books of The Silkworm and the Half-Blood Prince, are there the decaying skeletons of Career, Order and nigredo buried in the text?  More after the jump!

Career of Evil parallels:

A Glimpse at the Killer:  The only time we, the readers, have gotten information or perspectives that differ from Robin and Strike’s is when we got inside the killer’s head in CoE. I assumed from the get-go that the killer was amongst the game moderators; therefore, I saw the interludes into the game chatrooms as something very similar to how we saw scenes from Laing’s POV in CoE. The way they asterisked-out the creators’ names what very much like Laing’s depersonalization of “It” and “The Secretary.”

ME = BIID:  Strike has an unsympathetic reaction to an unpleasant person who uses a wheelchair, but who can walk (Tempest in CoE, Inigo in IBH). This same person runs an online support site for people that share their condition, and offers advice and support to young people in the group, even meeting them in person.  There are a lot of complaints on the support board about the condition not being understood or taken seriously by medical professionals.

In the Post? What’s worse than having random body parts delivered to your office? A frigging parcel bomb, that’s what. Between this and the poisoned chocolates, I think the agency needs to add a “no thank-you gifts” clause to their client contracts. You’d also think they’d have stopped accepting coffee or tea when interviewing suspects, after Janice Beattie.

A Few Too Many:  In both books, Strike physically supports a drunken Robin and leads her out of a bar.

Motorbike courier = bad news. It was not just a random horn blast that brought  the near-kissing Strike and Robin back to reality, but the roar of a motorbike courier. I challenge any Strike fan to see a motorbike courier and not remember the delivery of the severed leg. Just as that delivery started Strike’s business on the road to ruin and eventually ruptures their professional relationship, the roar of this motorcycle courier heralded the rupture of  the developing romance— at least for now.

Fancy Arty Restaurant:  Strike and Robin dine with case-related people in expensive, art-themed restaurants in both books. (the Gallery Mess in CoE; Arts club in IBH). Robin is put off by what she considers tasteless behavior by both Tempest and Heather. In CoE, they are broke but have to foot the bill; in IBH they have money, but are treated to the expensive meal.

Online sleuthing: Robin assumes a false identity to gain information from social media (BIID boards in CoE, Twitter and Drek’s Game in IBH).  This leads to a young, frightened witness agreeing to meet her face-to-face (Jason in CoE, Rachel in IBH).

Robin in danger: Robin is in danger and Strike insists she go to a hotel to stay safe. Later, Robin is disgruntled when Strike insists she stay inside and work on what she thinks is a rather pointless computer search.

Mummy’s Boyfriend:  Strike dates a woman with a child. And she even knows the woman with the child he dated in CoE. He keeps both relationships secret from Robin until she finds out from a woman who visits the office.

On the Road Again: Strike and Robin road trip and stay in a hotel, in separate rooms. Strike skips the full English breakfast both times.

Save the Children:  Robin and Strike manage to stop a pedophile in this book, as they did in CoE, even though that was mot the main target of their investigation. And Robin’s rushing into the house to rescue Flavia, despite Strike’s orders to the contrary, echoes her determination to save Angel.

Jonny Who?  Most of my predictions for IBH under 5-6 Flip came to naught, but I will give myself half credit for this one. I thought Charlotte and Rokeby might be out of the action, as they were in CoE. Charlotte wasn’t, but Rokeby certainly was, which no doubt suits Strike fine.

Machete-wielding Lunatic:  At the final confrontation, the killer is wielding a machete and Strike gets stabbed with it. This time, it is Robin, instead of Shanker, who jumps the guy from behind.

Order of the Phoenix Parallels:

Fallen Heroes:  There’s no online community in the wizarding world, of course, but the way fans turned against the IBH creators is similar to how the formerly adored Harry and Dumbledore are targeted by the media and turned into villains, thanks to the spread of untrue rumors.

Umbridge=Anomie: Sadistic, control freak, power-hungry, likes to cut people. Enough said.

Losing Everything:  Harry feels like he is losing the best things in his life: Quidditch, visits to Hagrid, letters from Sirius, while at the same time putting up with the stressors caused by Umbridge, impending OWLs, and Occlumency lessons. Strike could certainly relate, with the threats to his mobility, his business, and his relationship with Robin coming all at the same time.

Modern Day Death Eaters:  The Halvening is certainly the closest group we have seen to Death Eaters, with their pureblood-based beliefs. A number of them are rounded up and jailed at the end.

Nigredo Elements:

The biggest nigredo element is the overall tone of the text, which John described to me on the moderator’s channel as “god-awful dark and depressing.” Little wonder that the cover of the book is so dark. And, exploration of the “Dark Web” is key to the storyline.

Strike is certainly broken down physically more than we’ve ever seen him, being told to stay off the prothesis for 4-6 weeks (rather than his usual few days) and facing smoker’s cough and muscle spasms at the same time.

The office is literally blown up by parcel bomb. That’s pretty hot, fiery destruction.

The final confrontation occurs in a pitch-black house. Robin slips and slides in the “dark puddle” of the murdered father’s blood, then is threatened with rape, then is forced to enter the dank, cave -like room to retrieve a filthy hoodie to staunch Strike’s bleeding.  Not exactly a “purifying” finish.

There are two other alchemical predictions for which I will give myself credit. First, I thought there would be a woman character with a name meaning “dark” or “black”  (as a counterpart to Margot “Pearl” Bamborough, an albedo name); I suggested “Darcy” as one choice.  She was a minor character, but we got Darcy Barrett, would-be befriender and imaginary girlfriend of Gus, and the reason he was able to get the picture of Nicole Crystal that allowed him to create and impersonate Paperwhite. She was mentioned the first time we see Gus, when his mom asked “Have you heard from Darcy, dear?

Second, if TB was a “wet nigredo” it stands to reason that there would be a much-harder-to-pull-off “dry albedo“ in IBH. I suggested we might see something bleached white by the sun. The Marine Hotel had a display of “corrugated white coral” in their dining room. Coral turns white as a result of “bleaching,” or loss of its symbiotic algae. The two most common reasons are 1) rising ocean water temperature and 2) excessive sunlight. Granted, coral is not quite as omnipresent in IBH as rain is in TB, but it’s there.

Another good thing about 5-6 flip: It helps us understand why we didn’t see the same level of character growth in this book as the last, and may have even seen some regression. The thoughtful Strike of TB was back to using women as a distraction from his feelings for Robin; it’s Lorelei all over again. And the whole “clarification of his feelings” at the end? He was pretty clear on that back in TB, when he suspected she was dating Morris.

But I don’t want you to be with anyone else. I don’t want some other bastard to persuade you into a second marriage. I like knowing the possibility’s there, for us to, maybe…

I also didn’t like the line, “If he was absolutely honest with himself, this was the first time he’d seen her as a true partner, an equal.” C’mon, Corm. She’s cracked cases on her own before, she’s followed her own lines of inquiry before, and, in TB, he left her in charge of the agency on his lengthy visits to Cornwall.  I think the whole reconciliation over Mucky Ricci was based on the fact that she was his full partner, and he was not her boss.

They seemed to forget that entire conversation from TB, when they explicitly agreed that Robin should take the same physical risks as Strike. Would the post-Mucky-Ricci Robin have agreed to stay holed up in the hotel, based on a threatening phone call (which may not have even been meant for her–it was diverted from the office phone) while Strike and the rest of the team hung out at said office, which had already been bombed once?  With Strike having the added disadvantage of not being able to walk? If IBH was originally planned first, it becomes easier to see why Strike and Robin sometimes seem less in tune with each other than they were in TB.

So, we have a book that would fit into the time interval between LW and TB, and is chock full of nigredo elements and parallels to CoE and OotP.  I think that is textual evidence that The Ink Black Heart was originally intended as Book 5. Why the flip?  No idea, but as Strike says, means before motive.

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Literary Alchemy, Louise Freeman