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!

‘In Vino Veritas’ has been used before in these books and I think it’s important here. In short, alcohol reveals the true character of a person. In Strike’s case he’s funny and still thoughtful and never sexually intimidating to Robin. This is very important to her because of her history and it’s a big reason why she eventually falls in love with him. Matthew tries to force sex on her when he’s been drinking (when he tears the green dress) which is emblematic of his disrespect for her and Murphy we know is an aggressive asshole when drunk. To me this means he is always an aggressive asshole who successfully hides it most of the time. Robin is afraid of both of them in various ways. Of their judgment, of their tempers. She is overly passive in her relationships with them because she knows she’s on thin ice all the time and her rape has left her lacking self esteem (and also possibly because she knows if she dumps them she’ll have to confront how she feels about Strike). On the other hand we have Strike. Over the years he has shown her respect, recognised her talents and her worth as a person, putting aside his attraction to her as a woman as best he could. This has helped her reach a place where she trusts him. They have excellent arguments and they listen, reflect and negotiate with one another. I don’t think she’s ever felt intimidated or silenced by Strike, unlike her romantic partners. I think the problem she has now is that she’s all muddled as her feelings for him cross between professional and romantic. We see this in her questioning whether Strike really did get physical with Charlotte. She’s losing her grounding because of her repeated trauma. Now that he has told her in no uncertain terms how he feels and with the help of the sweary therapist, hopefully (🙏 please!) she will understand that he is the one she’s meant to be with. They both have to stop hiding things from one another.

@RobinEllacotStrike interesting post, had missed that there were THAT many babies in it!

Listened to the ‘reactions’ and ‘readers’ reactions’ episode of the Strike and Ellacott files. Haven’t heard the podcast before The enthusiasm, voice note immediate reactions going through the book and excitement of the hosts fun. But overall an annoying, repetitive listen. Lots of swooning over Strike. Concern for Robin, as on MN! Points made about the book not as interesting as MNetters’ posts.

They didn’t let the guests speak much!

I did like that they talked a bit about the different locations in the book.

Tbf not the best representation of the show because the excitement levels are off the charts. I loved it but that’s because I already love Lindsay, Pools and Kenz from listening for years. There is a lot of good analysis in the regular episodes but if you don’t want Strike swooning it’s probably not for you. 😁

Huh there’s a podcast? My car journey listening for this morning’s excursions sorted.

It’s a great podcast. You do have to filter out the Strike adoration & the ‘my heart hurts’ a bit sometimes but I can forgive all that for the interesting insights.

Plus the women have had the guts to embrace JKR’s views & are openly terfy.

Thank you, I will try a couple of other episodes, perhaps ones about the Running Grave.

Ok I am on board. Will report back.

I couldn't get through the podcast. It probably wasn't fair, but I gave up after about 10 minutes because I was listening while cooking and the constant inarticulate squeals and gasps were absolutely not the right background mood for making courgette fritters 😂
Was it in on this thread or another that someone said that they'd seen/heard an interview with JKR in which she said this was the 'parenting' book? I really noticed that, reading it. There were all the babies, and all the questions about the possibility (or not) of parenthood for Strike and Robin, and also the intense interest in accidental versus intentional breeding. There were the almost certain accidents (Robin's brother's vodka-knecking-girlfriend's pregnancy, quite probably the biscuit nicking toddler of the weed-smoking neighbours, and of course the central accidental pregnancy of the book, Decima's). But then there are the accidentally-on-purpose ones; Sarah's very intentional use of an 'accidental' pregnancy to seal the deal with Matthew obviously predates this book, but it was very interesting to see how that bore fruit for them both. Then, of course, there was the very much not an accident Spawn of Bijoux, which didn't have the effect she'd hoped in terms of marriage. And then there was Robin's short-lived pregnancy, which we were led to believe was genuinely accidental, and yet...given the interest taken by the book in women who use pregnancy to seal relationship deals, are we really sure that Ryan Murphy, especially a drunk Ryan Murphy, wouldn't try the same thing? He knew she was off the pill, he wanted a baby and wanted to push the relationship forward and she didn't seem sure. What really happened with that condom?
But I noticed that the book was also very interested in the behaviour of parents towards their older children. Robin's increasingly fraught relationship with her mother was a big feature, and one of the more interesting features of the just-won't-stay-buried reappearance of Charlotte was Strike's meeting with her mother. (As someone said on another thread, also: where are Charlotte's poor twins?!) | Meanwhile, Strike's back in touch with his father, who is finally behaving more or less like an actual father. Decima's awful father obviously turns out to be her lover's actual father also, while he has lost the benefit of anything resembling real parenting because of the skiing accident. And the second big reveal of the detective plot also hinges on a question of parentage in that disgusting Griff is not Chloe/Jolanda's real father at all. Meanwhile, if Tyler's parents had been present and supportive of him, he wouldn't have had to rely on people who then betrayed and murdered him.
As Strike says on Sark, after Robin tells him about her ectopic pregnancy, 'IF everyone thought properly about having kids before they did it, there'd be a lot fewer fucked up people in the world.'

On the alcohol thing, I think that's a really good call. It's noteworthy that when Murphy is drunk he messes up (accidentally or otherwise) with the condom and then shouts at her, while Strike's only drunken overture towards her is a tentative move toward a kiss. I also noticed that when Robin is very drunk with Strike he supports her out and puts her in a taxi, but when Robin is drunk with Murphy it's her brother who helps her home. And while Robin vomits with no one to hold her hair back, Murphy lies judgementally and hypocritically in bed, ready to snap at her about texting Strike.

If Murphy was to ask MN, they'd tell him that a) his gf was having an emotional affair, and b) this counts as cheating, which is the absolute worst thing a person can do in a relationship.

So he's got every right to snip at Robin's furtive texting.

But she's not having an emotional affair, or texting furtively. She isn't being honest with Ryan of course, and she's doing wrong by stringing him along when she's in love with someone else, but her relationship with Strike isn't an affair.

Of course it's an emotional affair! It ticks every box, by MN standards. They aren't having an affair as such but they couldn't be 'testing the water' more if they tried.

I don't agree. Strike is testing the water. Robin is doing everything she can to avoid thinking about her feelings for Strike. She's definitely not thinking about being with him or wanting to tell him how she feels. It's not an affair if it's one way only.

Avoiding the feelings she is very aware of having! She's less likely than Strike to take a flyer and lunge in, but that's because she's a well brought up woman who wouldn't dream of making anyone uncomfortable. Strike would be on it like a car bonnet at the slightest opportunity and she blimmin knows this.

It is a kind of emotional infidelity by Robin, eg the lies - that Strike has a girlfriend when he doesn’t, hiding the bracelet.

I’m not sure I agree, but it is pretty rich for her to get upset when her partners get suspicious of her feelings for Strike when she really does have feelings for him. But I do feel for her as she has good reasons for not pursuing Strike (the agency, his apparent disinterest in long term relationships) so she’s trying to force herself to believe that she can love someone else. But it’s not working. Matthew got what he deserved, but I’m more conflicted about Murphy. I don’t like him but he’s identifying very clearly what Robin is doing (holding herself back, keeping distance between them) and she’s actively falsely reassuring him. To do that to someone who has obviously struggled with infidelity in the past is pretty awful. She’s setting him up for an absolute meltdown when it all comes out and then she’ll blame herself and she’ll be right.

The bracelet thing was so odd! It seemed absolutely primed to bring them together at last, then.... nothing. And of course she hid it away. And neither of them mention it again.

Colleagues don't buy colleagues personal jewellery.

All his other women have just been pretty airheads really.

Not really. Charlotte was beautiful, yes, but he met her studying classics at oxford. Subsequent girlfriends with high powered careers of all sorts. Even the dreadful Bijou is a lawyer.

I think he's going with women with busy professional lives like him because he hopes they'll also be happy with a casual relationship. Which you could ascribe to a reaction to Charlotte's toxic overdependency, or just the nature of the job where he keeps losing interest in social life when the case gets intense.

But Robin refuses to hear what Strike is telling her.

Shouting at him for not letting her know when he’s made it perfectly obvious.

She knows she loves him, but thinks she’s wrong for doing so.

Loralei wasn’t an airhead, and was lovely by all accounts.

Perhaps pretty airhead was the wrong word. I really meant that Strike could only relate to them on a physical level. At one point Robin (I think) asks Strike was he prepared to deal with all of Charlotte's toxicity because she was so beautiful, to which he replies 'It's helps'.

I didn’t like Strike as a potential romantic partner for Robin in this book, he was so manipulative and childish and instead of thinking “how can I be the best version of me so that she wants to be with me?” he went for the “how can I engineer it so she has to spend as much time away from her boyfriend as possible”. He came across as very self centred and following the the thought of a previous poster, if Robin came on here and said “I’ve got feelings for my work partner, he lives above the office, drinks alone a lot of the time, has had multiple short lived flings recently, snaps at me for saying I can’t work on my day off and doesn’t take my work suggestions about Reata Lindevall seriously” I think many of us would be suggesting she should break up with Murphy but stay single rather than get together with Strike. Yes she was passive and a bit frustrating but after what happened in the last book I don’t think that’s to be unexpected. I’m hoping they don’t get together in the next book and both get themselves together a lot first.

Hard agree. He's a great fictional detective and a truly crap romantic prospect. I found him repellent in this one.

@JeannieDark
he was so manipulative and childish and instead of thinking “how can I be the best version of me so that she wants to be with me?” he went for the “how can I engineer it so she has to spend as much time away from her boyfriend as possible”. He came across as very self centred

Agree 100%. I wanted to give him a good shake - stupid dick needs to try honesty and straightforwardness for a change.

Robin wasn't manipulative, but I wanted to give her a good shake for being an absolute wet blanket too. It's easier to understand her though, what with all the layers of trauma.

Both of them needed to go and have a good talk with a friend. I missed Ilsa!

I don’t see it this way. He wanted to get her alone so they could both be honest. Previously (whisky night and when he told her about Charlotte’s suicide) they got interrupted just as things were getting intimate. So he wants to make sure they have the privacy to have a proper conversation about it and to declare himself openly somewhere where she’ll have time and space to process it rather than having to go home to Murphy. I think that’s fair enough. It was a bit sketchy to crowbar it into a work trip but he’s a desperate man, knowing an engagement could be imminent. Also Robin is aware of the potential of the trip away and she’s excited/nervous about it. Of course it doesn’t pan out that way for him because of the Bijou debacle. His jealousy does come across in his thoughts as childish at times but I think that’s pretty normal. He doesn’t treat Murphy badly to his face. He’s certainly not perfect romantically but that’s their journey. They are both crap at it, but improving.

I think Robin’s behaviour is far worse in this book. She lies to Ryan even when he is very vulnerably pointing out that she is holding something back, actively assuring him she loves him and is committed when she is constantly questioning this. She also gives Strike the cold shoulder rather than confront him about Bijou. I think she does this deliberately to avoid what she thought was going to happen at the Lakes, even though she knows she’s in love with him. She’s no better than him and worse in this book.