SPOILER ALERT Hallmarked Man (Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott)

[Civilservant]

Spoiler thread for posters who have read or listened to The Hallmarked Man by Robert Galbraith (J K Rowling) and would like to discuss it!

nef is surely the most underwhelming word in the English language. It means a big silver ship, but it sounds like someone coughing on cream cracker crumbs. It shouldn't be a word at all, it should be a German cooker.

😂😂😂😂😂

Well, it's a loan word from French but I totally agree. It should be something like argentalleon (which I just made up).

nef is naff 😁

It's a handy word for Scrabble.

I love your staircase perspective - I was also thinking about in book #1 TCC - when Robin was on her way up the staircase, Charlotte (representing the past?) was on the way down.

So frustrated. Don't know what to read next.

Fan fiction. Lots and lots of fan fiction. That’s all that’s keeping me going!

Have you dipped into the Slow Horses series by Mick Herron? I went straight from Corm to those and it was good. I'm gasping a bit now but I'm sure I'll find something else...

How does one find fan fiction?

Ooh. I've watched them but didn't know they were based on books.

There’s an interesting contrast between Strike and Slow Horses. I love both but through my current Strike obsession I’ve concluded that the books have far more of what I want - thought and reflection - as opposed to the TV adaptations that are obliged to cleave to constant action. But with Slow Horses it’s the TV adaptations that bring the books to life. I could never have imagined the TV characters for myself, nor the various settings like Slough House - and although Mick Herron tells a good story I’m a bit ambivalent about his characterisations and interior monologues. So for that, TV definitely wins.

Here you go!

https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Cormoran%20Strike%20Series%20-%20Robert%20Galbraith/works?page=1

OMG I don't know wether to laugh, cry or celebrate.
The Strike series is my first ever "fandom" and now there is fan fiction tog etr my ehad around.
I thought enjoying The Strike & Ellacot Files podcast was extra, but the fan fiction is another level.

I've just finished my reread of THM so I will dip into the fan fiction.

@BitterTits have you re read /re listened to all the books from the beginning?

Life’s too short for fan fiction …

Fanfiction is a wonderful thing, as is fandom in general - there's a sense of community and the giddiness of shared enthusiasm. What's not to like? You get to read stuff for free, which may or may not be well-written or to your taste (but AO3 has good filters which helps with that), and if you're creative and want to write your own, you can. Maybe it'll get read, maybe it won't. Maybe you'll find a fan space where people will help you improve or bounce ideas with you. If you read something you like and leave a comment for the author to say so, you'll make their day.

I've not read any Strike fanfic, but I've read my share in other fandoms 😍

Life is indeed short.. so short that it’s entirely possible the only way I’m going to see Strike and Robin get together is in fan fiction, given how slow it is in canon!

(I’m 45 and in good health! 🤣)

I have found my people! Finished it last night and AARGH! How frustrating!

Robin needs EMDR and proper therapy, and I’m really hoping we get to see more of this. Agree with the trauma comments but there’s also something in there about female socialisation and the expectation to be nice to everyone and deny your own feelings.

I really felt for her in this book in that she doesn’t seem to have any female friends to confide in. I couldn’t work out if it was because Vanessa and Ilsa were pregnant/had babies and therefore she couldn’t confide about the ectopic pregnancy, but she seems to have become so isolated. It’s odd because in the first book she calls all her friends to tell them about her engagement - and then we never see any of those friends, and it seems she only has “Matthew’s friends”.

One thing that really wound me up was the house buying story. How can they be putting in offers on houses when they haven’t put their own flats on the market?! It would have been much more realistic for Ryan’s flat to have sold way faster than anticipated and for him to have to move in with Robin while they sell hers and buy the house - and then she would have been making him homeless when she needed space and found the “water bottle”. Don’t get me wrong - it works much better for Robin that they keep their own places but I did find it quite unrealistic.

Yes, there was a real feeling of female socialisation coming through in this book, I loved it. The confused stress of pregnancy and pregnancy loss, and not being sure if you want children anyway, and feeling unable to talk to anyone about it. Robin needs to post on Mumsnet I reckon.

I think I assumed that Robin and Ryan are both renting their flats, and plan to terminate the leases once they've found a house. But with any luck there'll be a breakup early on in the next book and it'll be a moot point.

I'm wondering how Robin is going to feel safe at home again. We've already seen that she feels better when Strike is around - perhaps there'll be a plumbing issue at Strike's place, or asbestos or something, so he'll have to move out, and in the interim goes and stays with her... (The fanfic reader in me can see that going down the "only one bed" trope 😂)

I’m certainly confused by their property situations - more so because I’ve just re-watched Lethal White on TV, during which Robin buys a really quite nice one bedroomed flat in a smart new block. So I can’t quite reconcile that with her living in a shabby, thin walled place in the later books.

Her house envy (or not so much envy as consciousness of what she lacks) is palpable when she visits other people’s homes.

Now that's a word to conjure with!

I thought Robin loved her flat at first but the shine wore off a bit, especially when compared with rich people’s places.

And it’s pretty amazing that she was able to buy somewhere in London at all.

Robin bought her flat when the divorce was finally finalised from Matthew and he gave her her deposit back from the house they bought together.

You can tell I'm not a true fan, I don't retain the details 🙈😂

I just found another Easter egg/clue/foreshadow - when Strike is visiting Charlotte's mother he recalls when he and Charlotte wondered if their mothers ever met, and Charlotte wonders if Rokeby ever shagged her mother and says 'we could be siblings darling'