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POST NAMER TBC-- work harder, meme!

Welcome back, anyway! Chat fandom, media, creative things, weirdness from around the net, funny stuff, anything! Meme awaits!

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From: (Anonymous)

Also... So, a big reason for wanting to reread the whole series is to hopefully pick up more clues on the 'who killed Leda?' plot. Given Rowling's preference for twists and red herrings, I feel like it's going to be Shanker or Lucy. I didn't consider Lucy at ALL the first time around, but on a reread, I feel like it's pointing that way. She's mentioned in every book; a painting on her wall is associated with a morgue; she has motive to hate Leda. I was thinking that Rowling wouldn't want it to be a female killer, given the feminist current in the books... but these books have a roughly equal balance of male and female murderers, and also, Rowling's a mother to a daughter; I think she'd take a dim view of Leda and so far the books haven't got into that, because Strike is very forgiving of her (understandably!). But at the very least I think the contrast between his experience growing up and Lucy's is going to come up, at some point. Read through that lens, Career of Evil feels like it's laying groundwork for motive.

With Shanker, meanwhile, there are some things you could read as hints (Robin fearing him at first sight; narration that says repeatedly not to underestimate him; his tendency to only turn up to help AFTER the main characters have had a kicking). He's established to have access to Leda at the time of the murder, he reacts strangely to things, and he isn't afraid to, well, shank people. He is also mentioned in book 1, although not by name. But I don't think Rowling would be keen on a main plot where someone takes in a kid off the street, only for him to murder them. I also don't think she'd want to imply that Strike was such a bad judge of character.

I think it has to be someone close to Strike, because that makes a more interesting story. So rn I'm torn between thinking it's silly to suspect Lucy at all, and thinking it was TOTALLY Lucy. Or possibly indirectly and she helped cover it up; method seems like a weird one for something done in anger. Seems more like a cool-headed killing to hide something. Lots of contradictions! Will be reading closely! :).

From: (Anonymous)

(It's hard to imagine Rowling wanting a main plot where a daughter kills her mother. Otoh, a mother who takes her daughter to live in a series of squats with a series of rapey, violent boyfriends, when she could just take the kids to live with her family in Cornwall whenever? But doesn't want to because she finds it *boring*? Either there's much more to Leda and her family are secretly terrible, or Lucy's murderer-reveal speech writes itself.)

From: (Anonymous)

but yeah, could also see someone doing it when angry on her behalf, and first book did say she was on fairly good terms with her dad. or could see her seeing that leda was in trouble and angrily leaving her to it, rather than helping, not expecting her to actually die.

From: (Anonymous)

Onto Lethal White. Now, I'm trying to lose weight. I put on 2kg in the last fortnight, and I blame the Strike books. There is a chocolate orange in the cupboard, that I need to resist.

Otoh: I'm about to *read* a Strike book.

Will I be able to make it at LEAST until tomorrow without cracking and going for the orange???

It's not looking hopeful. Prepare for the suspense of the century.

From: (Anonymous)

PROLOGUE

If the book starts with a roast dinner so help me

From: (Anonymous)

Opens on a wedding. I am in real danger.

From: (Anonymous)

Page 17. No roast, but they're eating a salmon starter. This doesn't appeal to me-- but I'm not getting complacent.

From: (Anonymous)

Roast-resentment notwithstanding, credit to Rowling as she manages to coin a two-word description for Wenlock and Mandeville: "cycloptic molars".

From: (Anonymous)

(and, no, am not THAT weird; like everyone else, I had to look up their names; I'd remembered them as "Wendell and whatsitsface".)

From: (Anonymous)

Oh! This is the one with the "leftists"! I'd forgotten that was in this book. One of my fave things in the series. :D

There's a guy who's wearing both a Mao hat and a Che T-shirt. There's a Jack-Monroe-style rich girl larping as a cockney. There's the hyperbolic, offensive rhetoric, sometimes co-opting real causes (inequality! The environment!), sometimes dissolving into nonsense, always with an undercurrent of antisemitism and all led by a pervy attention-seeker. Living in a city hosting the Olympics is compared to living under military occupation. The satire is spot-on (made better for Rowling allowing her "leftist" rabble to include some politics I'm pretty sure she agrees with; stops it feeling too preachy and fake). I think I'm going to enjoy it more, this time around, and I enjoyed it a lot last time.

From: (Anonymous)

Lethal White, Pg 138, and you can almost *hear* the editor, "If you make them infiltrate an obnoxious hard left group, people will assume Strike's far right! Fix it!!!"; there's a rather sudden and unsubtle detail about how he also particularly enjoyed infiltrating a far right group, in the past, and getting some prosecutions.

(As for roast dinners, currently doing okay. Have witnessed salmon, mousse, an ice cream, orange juice, cold roast beef, boiled potatoes, pad thai, and incalculable pints of beer, but no appetising roasts, in these pages, so far. I've just had a donburi readymeal and some chocolate biscuits, so I feel like my shields are up.)

From: (Anonymous)

Lethal White, p234. "the hacking organisation, Anonymous". +_+ Am sure I winced last time, just as hard. Why do people find this so hard.

From: (Anonymous)

(this is Strike POV, tbf, and he is a bit of a technophobe... but he's supposed to be a detective!)

From: (Anonymous)

I've never understood it, though. Why do media types struggle so MUCH with this? The word 'anonymous' isn't a new word, and is used in exactly the same way it is anywhere else. (I probably ranted the same way last time. My confusion has not diminished with time!)

From: (Anonymous)

Anyway, back to the food. Since we left off, Strike has ordered a fish and chips. Dangerous. BUT he ordered ketchup with it. Who has ketchup with *fish* and chips??? Salt and vinegar, or gtfo. Idk if I can see him the same way, after this.

From: (Anonymous)

Joke that went over my head, last time: a QC called Maugham, who's quick to throw tantrums and who is described as having a "smoothly porcine" face.

From: (Anonymous)

I saw something recently that was like "you wouldn't put the name of a foe in your book! That's giving them far too important a place!", and I remember thinking "If I wrote a book, I would absolutely put the names of every last prat who's ever annoyed me in it". So am amused to see Rowling seems to be closer to my side of that fence. :p

From: (Anonymous)

Also, I really should've known that Raphael was the killer the minute he tried to use his having killed a woman by accident as a chat-up line.

From: (Anonymous)

Still on Lethal White. I forgot how much of this one was puns. Aside from the murder centering on one big pun, Rowling's apparently on a mission to put a horse on every page. Pg 553:

"So, still no real leads?"

"Hold your horses."

+_+

She describes a hard left party (yet another pun) and it's so horrendous I'm still cringing. A young woman fucks the grey-haired mao-hatted old guy in a grim toilet. A man called Digby lectures the women on how feminism can only ever be a byproduct of marxism, while trying to look up their skirts. Another man hears a woman's father has died, and tries to use it to chat her up, sticking a thin veneer of politics on it so he can claim they have a bond (some 20ish years between them, too). The house is bedecked in nearly all the worst flags. Finished the chapters a while ago and I can still smell the BO. +_+

From: (Anonymous)

Finished. I had vaguely remembered that Chiswell was involved in exporting something immoral, but not the details or what. I found that part of the plot really odd, even though it's based on a real news story from 2006, because I'd've thought it made no economic sense for anybody. Manufacturing gallows in the UK and exporting them to much poorer countries? How is that profitable? Or affordable? Wouldn't they source them pretty much anywhere else? It's not like it's some new tech needing new, specific manufacturing techniques, which is the kind of thing where a poorer country might be forced to buy from a richer country; you'd think there'd be lots of (much!) cheaper competition. Found it odd on a first read, still find it odd now.

This one was better as a detective novel than Career of Evil, though; very convoluted and red herringy, but fair! You can reconstruct events and guess whodunnit/howdunnit/whydunnit based on the crime scene and other info you've been told, rather than requiring 1 tiny detail that isn't even in the book.

I mostly like this one for the relationship drama and PTSD stuff, though. And for the moral ambiguity of Chiswell himself, as you find out more about him with each chapter. Also, trying to fight off your bastard-son painting-thief murderer with your deceased golden-son's wall-mounted fencing sword is the most comically stereotypical old school MP behaviour, it made me laugh. This is indeed how all people entrusted with British government are supposed to operate. If you have never reached for a rapier on the wall to fight off an intruder, can you even call yourself an MP?

From: (Anonymous)

And I think having a relative who tries to kill you is a universal requirement for being a member of some aristocracy.

From: (Anonymous)

I want to go straight onto Troubled Blood (again!) for more Relationship Drama, but I need to travel soon and it's not the *easiest* book to carry around. Hate e-readers. So may be delayed. :( Hoping it'll function like Game of Thrones and there'll be a random copy that has sprung up at my destination. Pretty sure Game of Thrones just spawns fresh copies if you leave a bookshelf alone for a few days.

From: (Anonymous)

how long do i need to leave a game of thrones out for the winds of winter to spawn :(

From: (Anonymous)

Back to Troubled Blood. I'm about halfway through.

I think I said this last time, but damn, Strike's so overharsh to Irene. It's like

Dave: *eyewatering misogyny; implies he's basically a rapist*

Strike: Good old Dave, what a chum

Irene: *prejudice and a rude manner*

Strike: THIS IS THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD

I keep thinking "lay off my girl irene", which is probably overkill, but between the obnoxious comments and interrupting people mid-sentence, she gives mountains of useful information! At halfway through the book, they'd be in a position to close the case, if they *listened* to her! And she basically says that, like 'look I'm rude and unkind but you just want the truth, right?'. Yes, Irene, I do!

But Strike cuts her off again and again, writing her off as an irrelevant gossip. Boo.

Meanwhile, I had remembered Dave was a twat, but I had either forgotten or not appreciated what an absolutely monumental twat of twatacular proportions he was. I'm sad he didn't get eaten by that shark. His poor wife. I *had* remembered what a twat Saul was, but it's still hard to read the descriptions of him ooooozing slime, the woman-hate pulsing under the surface. Can't wait for him to get punched in the face.

I had also either forgotten, or never realised, that Shanker is still going out with Alyssa! In this book, he's getting Christmas presents for her kid. :D How long is that, 3 years?

I notice my theory that possibly Lucy killed Leda isn't being *contradicted*, where she takes pains to say that she never considered Leda to be her mother, with a rather sinister sentence that goes something like "not since I was 14. Younger, actually." and she hilights that Strike's relationship with Leda was different to hers. The book also reveals that Leda abandoned Lucy as a newborn, leaving her with her (Leda's) parents. Children who receive little maternal affection tend not to fare too well when it comes to not-turning-evil, in Rowling's work. The method is still a stretch, though. One thing I'm vaguely considering: in the last book, it was revealed that Leda had had another child, with Whittaker, shortly before she died. I'm wondering if Lucy *did* kill her, it was partly to protect that kid from growing up with Leda. And I'm wondering if the stuff about social identity theory is partly a hint that we shouldn't group people together toooo far just because they're siblings.

But as Shanker appears in each book (albeit not by name in the first), I think he's also still on the map. This book also hilights women bringing murderers into their homes without realising it. I think he's either in these books so consistently to be a murderer, or to get murdered, down the line. I still lean toward the latter, but statistically, he's more likely to have killed Leda than Lucy is. And Strike's established to have a blindspot when it comes to his friends being terrible. But he's also established to have a blindspot about how bad things can be for women and girls, which leads back to Lucy...

Whatever happens, I just know I'll be very offended if it turns out to be some random.

The dialogue in this one is creakier than the others, sometimes sounding very stilted and contrived, and the book sometimes gets lecturey. Rowling also has an odd habit of calling Asian characters "brown" (and having others call them "brown"), which is weird because that's an American thing afaik. Might be more popular today, with American influence, but not in 2013ish when the book is set. Maybe they changed it to accommodate a US audience, since over there, Asian means East Asian. In the UK, it means from Pakistan, India and thereabouts. Probably frowned at this last time.

And again, I remember all the people who claimed the TRAs were crazy about imaginary slights in the book, "there's just a killer that wears a woman's coat to disguise himself in one scene, that's all!". Erm he did also steal women's underwear, wear it and wank into it. I've no quarrel with the depiction, but I think it's fair to say they were in this picture and they didn't like it.

I also just don't buy how dense Strike is about Schmidt; wouldn't he google "schmidt astrology"? And wouldn't Robin? So why isn't that possibility given in his set of deciphering notes? I guess we're going to have to chalk it up to Strike's flu, because it's really weird to assume Schmidt is a figment of Talbot's imagination, rather than some real astrologer-pseudo-intellectual, especially given same pages keep referencing Crowley. I've put this in spoilertext but I don't think it's really a spoiler, because that's the first thing you'd think. *shrug*

Anyway, still enjoying it. Series still making me hungry, though Rowling was good enough to put food-poisoning in this one, to counterbalance. Also, it's heavy, so I'm pacing while reading to get my steps AND get some muscle in my arms. What a useful book!