As the Cormoran Strike series grows in length, complexity and number of readers, more and more errors are noticed by sharp-eyed fans. Just as with Harry Potter, some of those errors are being corrected in later editions.
This post is being compiled to both collect all Hogpro posts on book errors we have found, and as a place to report any corrections or changes readers spy in later editions. Please list in the comments sections.
MISTAKES:
- Errors first noted in Cuckoo’s Calling.
- Errors from Lethal White.
- Errors from Troubled Blood.
- The life and times of Donald Laing gets its own post.
- Rowling/Galbraith is not good with dates.
- I mean, really, really not good.
CORRECTIONS:
- The most elaborate (and probably least necessary, since the will was still invalid!) correction was the addition of Aussie-Vashti-Saleswoman Mia Thompson to The Cuckoo’s Calling. This was the most elaborate correction seen in Ms. Rowling’s work to date, requiring the addition of a new named character and edits of multiple chapters.
2. One error caught quite early, and therefore present in only the first printing of Troubled Blood, was a continuity error when Strike and Robin were enjoying fish and chips in Skegness. Strike discovered he was out of cigarettes. He suggests buying some. Then, Robin is surprised by Gloria Conti’s message. After their exchange on this topic, Strike “lights himself another cigarette.” Then, a mere few lines later, they “set off in search of cigarettes.” This error was fixed in later editions of the hardback, the audiobook and the paperback.
3. The TB audiobook also initially changed the name of Strike’s oldest woman friend from Ilsa (“Ill-sah”) to Isla (“Eye-lah”). Thus was largely corrected in later editions.
4. Hogpro reader PerLish kindly pointed out that the “newborn Lucy” who was left in St. Mawes with four-year old Strike has now been amended to “2-year-old,” in the paperback version of Troubled Blood, making the siblings’ relative ages consistent with the rest of the series.
When I passed this information on to the Strike.fans Twitter group, participant @LudicrousMonica checked her Troubled Blood paperback and found a few others:
5. In Chapter 21, “Irene and Janice’s row” is corrected to “Irene and Margot’s row.”
6. The original chapter 36 had Cynthia Phipps offering to make coffee, then coming back and pouring everyone tea, then refilling Roy’s tea, then Roy taking “another sip of coffee.” It has been corrected to be 100% tea. Note: We missed this error in our summary post.
7. Thankfully, Robin is now remembering going to three funerals in her life. She first speaks of her grandfather’s funeral, when she dropped out of university. Strangely, however, the following paragraph, about Rochelle Onifade’s cremation, still begins with “The only other funeral…” Mrs. Cunliffe’s services–and the fact that Robin nearly missed them–still don’t get a mention. Rather bizarre; if you are going to correct it, why not do a full job of it? Surely space wasn’t an issue, after the wordage devoted to Mia Thompson?
Alas, Dave Polworth’s mother is still in Schrodinger’s Cat limbo.
I hope this post will inspire holders of all the paperbacks to go back and take a look to see what else has been changed. Please enter in the comments so we can maintain a master list.
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I wonder if it is better to categorize these corrections according to their corresponding books.
I checked my paperback of Cuckoo’s Calling printed after Troubled Blood (34th printing of UK ver.), and none of the three ‘errors’ listed in the HogPro post has been corrected.
I’ve found no HogPro list of flints in The Silkworm for comparing.
For Career of Evil, the timeline of Laing has no correction in the 15th printing of paperback.
First four flints listed in the Lethal White post are fixed in no later than the fourth printing of the paperback. The one about Sarah’s earring is answered in Troubled Blood: yes, she lost that deliberately. And the other one about the credibility of gallows trafficking is replied in the comments.
[Here is a link to a recent post with a One Stop List for all HogwartsProfessor posts on gaffes and Professor Freeman’s timelines. — editor]
I loved the Schrodinger’s Cat joke; how can Dave Polworth’s mom be dead and alive?
Aunt Joan reported Dave’s mother had concerns about Penny’s willingness to move back to Cornwall at the story start but Dave tells Strike after Joan’s funeral that his mother is dead, thank you very much.
Three possibilities:
(1) It’s a gaffe, straight up, and Rowling-Galbraith’s pride restricts correction of her work suggested by Serious Strikers to one, maybe two changes per edition;
(2) It’s something akin to the Shadlock Earring drop we are supposed to note but which could be a deliberate point the author is making (i.e., Dave’s mother has died in the recent past and Strike is so consumed by his own grief that he doesn’t note this revelation by his oldest mate, which rather makes the point, I think, of Polworth’s “Easy for you to say” when Strike glibly assured his friend that “I would” do the same for you); and
(3) Joan went to a gypsy fortune teller-medium again and communicated with the late Mrs Polworth about her son’s return to St Mawes.
I’m leaning towards gaffe. If. after all Dave did for the Nancarrows, if Mrs. Polworth died during the events of Troubled Blood and Strike and Ted didn’t even send a card, they are pretty scummy.
Not to mention Dave seems pretty glib about it for a recent bereavement .
You’re probably right, but I’m hoping for significant Polworth back-story on his visit to London in Ink Black Heart. If Rowling-Galbraith chooses to reveal when and how the late Mrs Polworth died sometime in the course of Troubled Blood and it didn’t merit a mention, I’d love to see how she squares that up with Strike, Nancarrow, and Little Dave behaviors in Strike5.
About PerLish’s comment, I’m struck by her discovery of a notable absence in our gaffe hunting here; we’ve never compiled a list of errors specific to The Silkworm. Is it credible that Strike2 was Flint Free?
I recently re-listened to the Silkworm audiobook an no huge errors jumped out at me. I think that was a result of it being too early in the series; there was relatively little revealed about either Strike or Robin’s backgrounds, as compared to Career of Evil and beyond, so there were fewer details to mix up.
Career of Evil, where we start having to hear about Strike’s army career and his encounters with Laing, Brockbank and Digger are when we start getting the dates that don’t match up.
I do remember wondering if “eight half-siblings” in CC was a mistake, since only 7 were listed the (6 other Rokeby-spawn plus Lucy) but little Switch solved that problem.
Percy,
Could you check the paperback CoE for Strike and Wardle’s initial conversation about Digger Mallory and see if the date of that operation is still listed as 2008? We now are reasonably sure Strike was laid up in Selly Oak for most of that year.