Strike: The Ink Black Heart - airs 16 Dec

[KiIIingMeDeftly]

Seems like we've been waiting ages for this but it'll finally be shown on BBC One on the 16th.

I don't think the book was as good as Troubled Blood or The Running Grave but I'm still looking forward to it. I wonder what they did with the numerous online chats that appear in it?

The orher thing I’ve just remembered - Robin & Strike had that conversation about her possibly having found Jago’s daughter on public transport. I can’t believe they’d be that indiscreet.

It would only have taken one journalist, or one person who recognised them & wanted a social media scoop. Or one person who knew the Rosses.

Only on second episode so things might improve but the series so far just reminds me that I found the book's storyline boring and uninspiring. Not into online cartoons, chat rooms and gaming. I just want more Strike and Robin!

Sometimes I've read the book, sometimes just heard it on audio, sometimes both, and I will agree with you wholeheartedly about Robert Glenister's reading of them.

I too am not into online cartoons, chat rooms and gaming so just didn't understand all the animosity with fans, writers, moderators etc.
in the end it was just another very disaffected, women hating youth with issues.

The very best part of this series is the chemistry between Strike and Robin. ❤️

I note it's 'only' 832 pages, her shortest Strike book since Career of Evil. I wonder if she's got a new editor who's been strict with her about her meandering plots and too many details.

I've watched the lot now, and I think it's fair to say that TIBH isn't the most successful season, or, at least, doesn't maybe translate well from the page.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book, even the chat room element, but the adaptation wasn’t great. It needed to be twice as long to really explore all the themes. The casting was good though, and the IBH game looked exactly as I imagined it.

Also, the scene where Robin met Rachel was not filmed in Meanwood Park, which annoyed me unreasonably!

See, I don’t get this criticism. I don’t read these books just for the main plot - the side stories, relationships and descriptive passages are just as important. Perhaps this complexity just doesn’t work on screen, but I just want more of it 🤷🏻‍♀️.

I've now read through all of this thread. The series did remind me of several things that were on my back burner.

I rather like Murphy - extremely pleasant without being drop-down gorgeous.

One of the reasons for Jago and Charlotte was surely her appearance at the office and her dropping the bit of poison about Madeline to make sure Robin heard it.

If Ilsa puts it on the line for them NOW, they aren't going to be able to shilly-shally for two more books.

I've been thinking back on what I've learned about their back stories since the first book. Cornwall, his father, mother, aunt and uncle, sister, nephews, great mate from school etc., mother's last fellow.......edit to add beer, burgers, chips, burgers, beer, chips, burgers.....

They had a discussion in this series when Robin said that she had had doubts about her marriage when she was on her honeymoon. I can't remember if that was in this book and I don't know where to search for it. Looking back, I do remember quite a lot about her wedding. So did Strike :)

I too thought Murphy was rather attractive @upinaballoon, but so too is Strike 😀

On the basis of the TV shows alone, it's hard to see why Robin ever married in the first place. She wasn't that into him even before the wedding. Obviously they could make the counter-point with Charlotte marrying the awful Jago, but Robin wasn't daft enough to expect Strike to be rescuing her on a white charger.

Robin was raped at university and he looked after her afterwards. Her parents knew him and he seemed a safe option.

And she was going to tell Matthew on the honeymoon that she’d made a mistake, but he became ill & she couldn’t.

It is a little difficult to see why Robin married Matthew, because he's painted as being unlikeable right from the start. I read the first four novels after TB, and expected Matthew to be treated with more subtlety and given some redeeming features.

I haven't RTFT but I found it hard to watch as it seems to have been filmed in complete darkness or is it just me?!

Not just you, I found myself squinting at the TV wondering whether my eyes are going to hell 😅

He was always controlling, I think, but after her rape she saw it as kind, considerate and a safe pair of hands.

In the first book she's excited and happy about being engaged and seems hopeful about their future together. There's some tension around her beginning to work for Strike which I found believable and unremarkable in terms of relationship norms. I think it's only with a MN relationships/more mature experience of life that you look at that entire thing and go ugh, ditch him.

Also I remember people defending him up to the point that it's revealed that he cheated and continued to cheat into the "present day". If you start in a later book, then you already have that perspective so I think you're more likely to see him as being jealous and controlling rather than protective and insecure.

I saw him as controlling straight away but, as you say, life experience.

So those folk who wonder whether to read them from the start, Yes, go for it, find out all that happened to them to make them where they are today, oh, as well as the crimes.

agree
I think of them as the 21st century Dickens...the basic plot of Oliver Twist (poor orphan finds his real rich family), or whichever, is pretty simple, it's the side characters and depictions of Victorian London, etc. that are compelling.

Me too.

And now I'm terribly disappointed on Audible to discover a book is only five hours long. Doesn't seem right!

I enjoyed the piece when Charlotte went out and Pat said. "I liked her coat." I read that as, " I liked her coat. I didn't like her." If I had all day to do it I'd look for that moment in the book and read around it.

I rewatched episode one last night and enjoyed it a lot more. First time I was 'oh that's not the right order' or 'that's not how I imagined him'.

But having now become used to the TV version I appreciated it more for it's own sake rather than looking at it as a comparison.

So guess I'll be rewatching the rest later!