*Spoilers spoilers spoilers* the running grave spoilers thread.. (Content warning - mentions suicide)

[EggTheParrot]

Just as the title says really.. spoilers ok in this thread. Let's keep the other one spoiler free??

Oh my god why is Robyn going undercover!

Did anyone else pick up on the toy rabbit? Such a minor point, but Niamh Doherty tells Robin that her little sister Maeve cried all night when they entered the cult as they took away her toy rabbit, then Robin sees an old dusty rabbit by the box with the polaroids in in the shed, in the pile of confiscated belongings. Robin finds Emily staring at Sylvanian families in Norwich after she runs away, and having forgotten it wasn't Emily's bunny I thought it was all linked to Emily, but having gone back to check it was Maeve's. Very potent symbol of loss of normal childhood anyway.

Also, so glad I'm not the only one muttering about IR35 whenever the contractors come up!

@lentildoll great spot, and I knew I'd seen another mention of the Forester - the quote at the beginning of chapter 121 includes "whoever hunts deer without the forester only loses his way in the forest". And that is the chapter in which Strike announces he has worked it out!

Paterson INC jars with me, I'm sure I'll be corrected but I thought UK companies were ltd and inc is American?

nit picking i know but I'm on to my second listen and it must've been mentioned a dozen times.

(Needless to say I absolutely bloody loved it)

My guess is that Mitch Patterson just thinks it’s a cool name.

I'm sure those of you with the hardbooks already know, but I discovered with The Running Grave that under the dustjackets are a different embossed illustration linked to the book. When the cover for this book fell off and I noticed, I went and looked at all the others - love them.

ooooh - I’m off to check!

I’ve been reminded of Tasha Mayo having seen a man being charged with incitement to commit kidnap and soliciting to commit murder of Holly Willoughby. Fairly terrifying.

I just finished this today - have tried to make it last :)
I really enjoyed it, although I was really annoyed when Robin was ripping up the notes from Strike. Why didn't she just read them then put them back in the rock for the others to deal with?
Am looking forward to the next instalment!

In case anybody else found the rock, I assume.

I still say she should have eaten them…

I worried about the bits of notes just flying back into the woods.

Great book, best in the series I think.

I'm growing a bit frustrated with Robin's chip on her shoulder about accepting help when the men in her life are worrying about her. Strike has proven he trusts and respects her as his full business partner - most of his safety suggestions are actually very reasonable (like the taxis) but she hasn't internalised this yet. A character growth requirement for future books, I think.

Related: Robin not giving the full story in her messages. She needs to feel confident to say "here's the full picture, I'm in more danger than I thought, but I still want to stay in. Please send a protein bar instead of a Flake next time". Ryan may not like it but Strike would respect that and be able to plan better around it.

I dislike Ryan but at the same time understand Ryan being concerned about her relationship with Strike when she does fancy him and they are having an emotional affair.
Getting fed up with stupid misunderstandings screwing up their relationship though but don't really see them living together in married bliss. I'm not sure working with your spouse is a great idea,
In the book I could never really believe papa whatever his name is chose to marry evil spider woman. She was neither charming nor intelligent nor beautiful. Given papa guru had his pick of women she seemed an unlikely choice. Was it all about her daughter with the real wealthy father? Once dyoo was dead I'm surprised he didn't find a nasty accident for her. I presume they never legally married

Did she end up owning the farm/commune as the only one left? Land + potentially rich daughter?
Ali saw something in her. (Even if she was smelly and weird)
I think, later, she was needed to keep everyone in line on the farm while he took Becca off to America.

I think Robin reacting automatically to Ryan and seeing him as a less bad Matthew is pretty realistic - remember she's only had that one relationship. And previous to Ryan she was interested in Strike but then he keeps shagging all the glam women and Robin feels inadequate or assumes that he's not interested in a serious relationship, like Lucy says.

I like Strike's realisation that whether or not he gets together with Robin or she gets married to someone else, the agency is doomed unless they stay together. So he might as well chance it. I like them together, I think they make a good team. Would be interesting to see how they sort out having space from each other though if they get together.

Switch must be what, 20 by now? Maybe that's significant. The great grandparents are probably getting on a bit. Maybe he'll come looking for strike and Lucy. Or seek revenge on his dad?

I think this is true. I think communication is the issue here, neither side have been honest, have they? Strike has all but given up the glam women and unfulfilling shags, because he's now only interested in Robin. And I totally get where Robin is coming from...she doesn't think she measures up to the likes of Charlotte in looks, wealth or personality but I also think she needs to get over that and accept that Strike loves her for being her, not anyone else. Yy to the not accepting help from men too! I do think Ryan is a slightly-less-bad version of Matthew and she needs to have higher standards!

I found it interesting how Lucy and Greg's marriage is going. Lucy has achieved what she set out to get, a stable, suburban marriage to a man with a good job, and three boys. But I think it's a veneer. Greg is a prick imo, treating Ted as an inconvenience on his life. To Lucy, Ted is a father-figure, and was a stable influence in her childhood. Of course she's going to try and do her best by him, now that Ted is not well. Greg was horrible about it. That says a lot to me. I can also see a lot of myself in Lucy, for various reasons.

And when Lucy said she's going to give up nagging her brother about marriage and kids, when Strike wants to be in a monogamous relationship with Robin (but still no kids), was telling too. I think Lucy doesn't see the problems in her marriage, but the reader does. Very clever. Lucy is willing to put up with "good enough" and she has that in common with Robin and to a certain extent with Charlotte too who didn't marry for love but what? Status? Title? Money? All common themes on the decisions women make in life.

Switch must be what, 20 by now? Maybe that's significant. The great grandparents are probably getting on a bit. Maybe he'll come looking for strike and Lucy. Or seek revenge on his dad?

Switch might well also have changed his name. Or more likely, his great grandparents might have changed it.

Just finished. Loved loved loved it. I could have read on for another 900 pages.

Thoughts:

I loved how much character growth Strike has gone through since IBH, he's become someone worthy of Robin now and he's starting to realise it. Declaration at the end was perfect. I was afraid he would take Robin's non-response as another 'look of horror outside the Ritz', but his quietly confident "We'll see" to Pat shows that he didn't. Delicious.

Rowena Ellis really needed an online footprint, that struck me straight away. There's no way the UHC wouldn't have researched all their recruits - especially the potentially lucrative ones - before taking them to the farm.

I was sure Daiyu was still alive and would turn out to be someone we had met as an adult character, although not Becca - even in an environment with no calendars and where birthdays weren't celebrated, you couldn't bring a 7-year-old away for 3 years, then bring them back and tell everyone they were 14. And even with all the brainwashing in the world, people would have known who she was.

So the jogger on the beach was... not related to anything? There was so much focus on him/her on the noticeboard in the office, it was mentioned over and over again, but no resolution there (unless I missed something?).

Charlotte's suicide was - unfortunately - very realistic for her character and I thought
Strike's mixed reaction of sadness and relief was completely believable. And his relative lack of guilt was appropriate too. Yes, perhaps if he'd called her back that night she wouldn't have done it, but it would just have happened again and again until eventually she went through with it. He couldn't continue that pattern forever.

I really love Lucy. She's come through a truly awful, traumatic childhood and has given everything she has to not allowing the mistakes of her mother to carry through to the next generation. I'm glad Strike is starting to realise that and to treat her as more than just an obligation.

Please stop the phonetic rendering of working class and regional accents! It's not necessary and makes those passages so hard to read. It's possible to convey the same impression of dialect through word choice and syntax without messing with the spelling.

Rowena Ellis really needed an online footprint, that struck me straight away. There's no way the UHC wouldn't have researched all their recruits - especially the potentially lucrative ones - before taking them to the farm.

That’ a really good point.

I think the jogger was just a red herring.

I was pretty suspicious of Abby when everyone they’d interviewed got a vicious Wikipedia page…. except her.

For ages though I was convinced Noli would turn out to be Daiyu, so I got that completely wrong.

Switch was born when Strike was 17/18 so he'd be 24ish when Strike is 41.

I feel that we will see him one day or there'd be no point introducing the character.
And hopefully his great-grandparents changed his name to something less weird for everyday use - like Zowie Bowie preferring Duncan!

Utterly brilliant. And loved the ending...now the agonising wait for the next one. This was the best book yet

Is Zowie pronounced like Zoe or Zah-wee?

Anyone else highly suspicious that in the next book Strike is going to find out he has inadvertently become a father? We know that Bijou has previous form for fishing used condoms out of the bin and trying to inseminate herself.

Also, anyone else irritated at how Robin takes umbrage whenever the man in her life gets jealous about Strike? When in her every look and deed she clearly demonstrates Strike is always the most important man in her life.