Literature / The Hallmarked Man

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The Hallmarked Man is a novel by J. K. Rowling, writing under her Moustache de Plume, "Robert Galbraith." It is the eighth novel in her series about one-legged private detective Cormoran Strike.

The setting is late 2016-early 2017. The story opens with Cormoran and his partner Robin Ellacott accepting as a client a woman named Decima Mullins. It seems that recently a man was found murdered, in the vault of a London silver shop, after a robbery. The dead man was identified as a convicted armed robber, Jason Knowles, but Decima thinks that it was really her boyfriend and baby daddy, Rupert Fleetwood, who disappeared at around the same time. Strike makes inquiries and discovers that actually, the police were not able to get a 100% positive ID on the body, which was missing its hands. So the Strike and Ellacott Detective Agency agrees to take the case.

There is a complicating factor in the case. The silver shop, Ramsay Silver, is next door to a Masonic lodge, and the shop specialized in Masonic silver. The body had a Masonic symbol carved into its back and the dead man had a Masonic sash tied around his neck. The police dismissed the Masonic angle after identifying the dead man as Knowles, but Cormoran and Robin wonder if there might be an actual link to the Freemasons.

Meanwhile the detectives continue to live messy personal lives. Robin, who is still dealing with the trauma she suffered while going undercover with a cult in the previous book, has recently suffered from an ectopic pregnancy that required the removal of one of her Fallopian tubes. She also is conflicted about whether to commit to a long-term relationship with her boyfriend, police detective Ryan Murphy. For his part, Cormoran is dealing with the death of his beloved Uncle Ted. A woman Cormoran had an ill-advised fling with is suggesting that her new baby might be his. But beyond all of that, Cormoran is struggling to deal with the fact that he is in love with Robin. He knows that he must declare his feelings for her soon, before she becomes The One That Got Away.

Tropes:

• Abhorrent Admirer: Strike gets increasingly irritated at the increasingly obvious efforts by his employee, Kim Cochran, to get into his pants. He simply does not like her, and eventually brusquely tells her to stop. She quits the agency.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: For the second book in a row, in the last chapter. But while Strike did it in a roundabout, elliptical way at the end of The Running Grave that left Robin not quite sure what he meant, this time he leaves no doubt.
  "You need to – I want to say something."
  Strike descended one more step, so that they stood only two apart, and the blood was pounding in his ears, exactly as it had the morning he’d found out Charlotte was dead. The seconds ticked past, until, almost aggressively, he said,
  "I’m in love with you."
• Ask a Stupid Question...: Pat brings a fish tank into the office. Midge asks "Are we getting fish?" and Pat shoots back "No, turkey, what's it look like?"
• Beastly Bloodsports: The B plot has the agency investigating a guy nicknamed "Plug" because he is plug-ugly. They eventually discover that Plug is running an illegal dogfighting ring.
• Big "WHAT?!": Robin's response to hearing about Cormoran meeting his father for the first time in 24 years (and third time ever) is "What?.... You...what? Why? How?"
• Biological Parent Reunion: Cormoran, who has met his absentee father Johnny Rokeby only twice in his life and the last time when he was 18, finally sees him again. Rokeby breaks down in tears as he expresses his regret for not being there for Cormoran and asks if he can get to know Cormoran now. Cormoran agrees.
• Chekhov's Gun: At the beginning of the novel Cormoran takes only one memento from his Uncle Ted's house: a fisherman's priest used to finish off fish that are flopping on the deck of a boat. At the climax of the story, he takes the priest with him as his weapon when confronting the killer.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The woman shopping at Ramsay Silver hours before the murder, as the stolen silver was brought in. She is thought to be an ordinary customer, but she turns out to be the disappered Sofia Medina, who was part of the robbery/murder (although she thought it was a prank).
• Continuity Nod:
  • Too many to count, as there are loads of references to past events in the Cormoran Strike series. Cormoran's old nemesis, rival PI Mitch Patterson, is convicted of illegally bugging an office. Robin bumps into ex-husband Matthew when she's home in Masham for Christmas. Three of Cormoran's old girlfriends/one-night-stands appear: Ciara Porter (book #1) makes a brief cameo, while Nina Lascelles (book #2) still holds a grudge against Strike and is partially responsible for Immoral Journalist Dominic Culpepper's story, and Bijou Watkins, Cormoran's ill-advised fling from book #7, comes back on the scene after giving birth to a child that might be Cormoran's.
  • The great trauma of Robin's life, getting raped when she was 19, has been mentioned several times in the series. In this one it's a big part of the plot. Robin caught chlamydia from her rapist, and the chlamydia scarred her Fallopian tubes, which caused her ectopic pregnancy in this book and left her unable to have children except by IVF.
  • Eric Wardle, a cop at the Met who helped Cormoran out on some cases, quits the police and comes to work for the Strike and Ellacott Detective Agency.
• Daddy DNA Test: Eventually Cormoran is forced to take a DNA test to prove whether or not he's the father of Bijou Watkins's baby. He's enormously relieved to find out that he isn't.
• Downer Beginning: As the book opens Cormoran is cleaning out the house of his Uncle Ted, who died just ten days before. Robin is in the hospital recuperating from emergency surgery due to an ectopic pregnancy. She is also reeling after her doctor tells her that if she ever wants to get pregnant again she'll need to use IVF, and the odds of that succeeding aren't great.
• Dramatic Drop: When Strike reveals that the apartment Branfoot keeps on Black Prince Road is where he peeps on, and secretly films, people having sex. Kim Cochran has been there.
  Kim, who’d picked up her fork, dropped it on her plate with a clatter.
• Driven to Suicide: The real fate of Niall Semple, who drowned himself in a river, overcome with guilt about the SAS mission where his best friend was killed.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Cormoran, depressed at finding out that Robin and Murphy are looking to buy a house together, drinks most of a bottle of Scotch as he takes the train up to Glasgow. He wakes up the next morning very hung over.
• Eagleland Osmosis: A commenter on the "Abused and Accused" website (meant for victims of miscarriages of justice) complains that he was arrested for drunk driving but didn't get his Miranda warning. Another commenter answers "Miranda warnings are only given in the states you twat."
• '80s Hair: Pamela Bullen-Driscoll is an older woman and Robin observes that her whole look is stuck in 1980s fashion.
  When Pamela shook her head, her stiffly lacquered hair didn't move at all.
• Elmuh Fudd Syndwome: Lord Oliver Branfoot has a bad case of rhoticism and pronounces his R's as W's, saying things like "sewiously" for "seriously." The incongruous thing is that he's a profoundly evil character, a horrible pervert and Peeping Tom who has put a hit out on a male porn star who knows too much.
• Famous, Famous, Fictional: Robin goes to a large pub that was once a hip music venue. She observes from posters that The Who, Jimi Hendrix, and the fictional Deadbeats (Cormoran's father's band) played there. This happens again when Cormoran idly observes a jukebox and notes that it carries music by The Beatles, David Bowie, and the Deadbeats.
• Fear of Parenthood: Strike is not exactly a Child Hater but has previously admitted that he doesn't really understand children and does not get along well with most of the children in his life. He has also told Robin that being an accidental conception himself, he has no desire to bring another child into the world, that the world already has enough children. He is horrified when he learns that a brief fling he had in the previous novel, The Running Grave, with Bijou Watkins, may have resulted in her pregnancy. He is deeply relieved when the paternity test confirms that he is not the father.
• Flipping the Bird: Fiona Freeman aka Fyola Fay the porn star flips Robin the bird when Robin asks to come in and talk.
• Foreshadowing: Cormoran remembers how Charlotte's mother Tara once met Cormoran's father Jonny Rokeby, and how Charlotte had joked that "Maybe we're brother and sister." The ending reveals that Rupert Fleetwood is alive, and the reason that he ran away is that he figured out that Decima is his half-sister.
• Funetik Aksent: Heavily used, as throughout the series, to represent the accents of lower-class English, Scots, and the posh Branfoot.
• Handshake Refusal: Robin meets Gretchen Schiff, ex-roommate of the missing Sofia Medina. Gretchen is accompanied by her boyfriend Max, who is extremely hostile to the whole idea of talking to Robin, and who demonstrates this by refusing to shake Robin's outstretched hand.
• Immoral Journalist: Tabloid reporter Dominic Culpepper, who has a grudge against Strike and wants to ruin his reputation. He invents and publishes a wholly false story about Strike hiring a sex worker to implicate a target, then pressuring the woman for sex.
• Last-Second Word Swap: Charlie Carter says of Larry McGee, the delivery man who was fired, "Oh, he really f—messed up."
• Love Epiphany: Maybe technically not a true epiphany since Robin already realized this in the previous book. But she dissolves into tears over Strike's thoughtful Christmas gift, and once again thinks oh God, I love him, something she's been trying to repress/deny for a while.
• Manly Tears: "Rokeby's bloodshot eyes had filled with tears." A penitent Jonny Rokeby asks Cormoran's forgiveness for being an absentee father and hopes that they can get to know each other.
• Men Are the Expendable Gender: Discussed Trope, when Cormoran and Robin talk about how quick the press lost interest in the Ramsay Silver robbery after the police dismissed the Masonic conspiracy angle, and Robin observes that the horribly mutilated body would have been much bigger news if the victim had been female.
  Cormoran: Not fashionable, to say men are seen as disposable in certain contexts.
• Meaningful Gift: Cormoran loathes gift-shopping; this is a Running Gag throughout the series. But for Christmas he gets Robin a silver charm bracelet with charms corresponding to their past history: a Land Rover for the car they've driven around in, a Houses of Parliament charm for when Robin went undercover there, a Skegness charm for when the duo went there on a case, a silver sheep charm for when they laughed about Robin's father's job, a Libra scales charm (another nod to Troubled Blood), and of course a robin charm. Robin is moved to tears and has a Love Epiphany.
• My Eyes Are Up Here: Robin is irritated when she catches Kenneth Ramsay, owner of the silver shop, staring at her breasts. She crosses her arms and Ramsey looks away.
• Never One Murder: Strike stumbles across the corpses of Jim Todd, one of his prime suspects, and Todd's mother. They were both stabbed to death. It also turns out that Larry McGee, Sofia Medina, and Chloe were killed as part of the cover-up even earlier.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: The sinister Branfoot invites Strike and Robin to an oppulent dinner to threaten them and gloat about his advantage. Amusingly, once Strike turns the tables by revealing his own ample evidence, Branfoot sourly storms off after telling Strike to "pay for your own damn dinner."
• Off the Wagon: Murphy, the recovering alcoholic, has started drinking again. This throws a wrench into his relationship with Robin.
• Offscreen Breakup: Tasha and Midge rather abruptly break up after all of their scenes together in the last book.
• One Drink Will Kill the Baby: Robin asks her brother Martin's girlfriend what she wants to drink, expecting the answer to be "fruit juice," given that she's seven months pregnant. She's surprised when she is instead told "Double vodka on the rocks, please!"
• Parallel Porn Titles: "Dick de Lion", the porn actor who might be the body in the vault, has been in movies with titles like Twelve Horny Men and The Ass House. His friend, porn actress Fyola Fay, has credits that include I Know Who You Did Last Summer and Done Girl.
• The Peeping Tom: Lord Oliver Branfoot lures victims into having sex with porn stars, while Branfoot secretly watches them from a hidden room. He also secretly has them filmed, so he can watch the sex later.
• Perfumigation: Strike meets Jade Semple, the missing Niall Semple's wife. He is annoyed by the "heavy oriental perfume" that she's wearing when she meets him, and suspects that she's wearing it to cover up body odor.
• Pet the Dog: Strike is far from a touchy-feely kind of guy, but he makes a point of visiting Wardle in person when the latter is having a very serious rough patch, and in a subtle heartwarming way, offers him a job the second Wardle mentions leaving the force, even without consulting Robin first. Wardle accepts and mentions his visit was what prompted him to get better.
• Posthumous Character: Cormoran's mentally unstable lover Charlotte, who killed herself in the previous Strike book, The Running Grave. Charlotte is much in Cormoran's thoughts in this book, as Rupert Fleetwood has ties to Charlotte's family, and over the course of the story Cormoran interviews Charlotte's half-brother Sacha Legard, Charlotte's stepbrother Valentine Longcaster (who is Decima's brother), and Charlotte's monstrous mother Tara. Cormoran is also thinking about his dysfunctional 16-year relationship with Charlotte a lot as he contemplates possibly starting a new relationship with Robin.
• Potty Emergency: Mickey Edwards, one of the scumbags who came to Ian Griffiths's home to rape Sapphire, wets himself after he and the other rapists are captured.
• Promiscuity After Rape: A teenaged girl named Sapphire has disappeared after meeting the mysterious identity thief who goes by the name of Oz. As a child she was abused by her father and uncle. Sapphire's school friend Tia observes that Sapphire slept around at college.
  Tia: "Girls like her, they think they’ll get over it by letting boys do it to ’em again. Telling themselves it’s no big deal."
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: When a drunk girl at a bar asks Robin about the Cormoran Strike sexual harassment story, an angry Robin says "It—didn't—happen!"
• Race for Your Love: The ending, in which Strike dashes out the door to tell Robin he loves her, before she goes off for dinner with Murphy.
• Red Herring: A red herring within a red herring! Early on, Strike guesses that the gory Masonic imagery associated with the robbery/murder is misdirection, and he is right. But it turns out that the entire robbery was a giant misdirection, and the silver is still hidden in the vault. The whole thing was solely about murdering poor Tyler.
• Remittance Man: Strike does a video call with Zacharias Lorimer, Rupert Fleetwood's wastrel roommate. It turns out Lorimer is in Kenya doing "eco-lodge tourism stuff." Strike thinks that this is "the twenty-first century equivalent of shunting off the unsatisfactory son to the colonies."
• Rewind, Replay, Repeat: Robin watches the video of "William Wright" tripping, as he went over to the window, five times, trying to figure out what about it bothers her. Sure enough, it's a vital clue.
• Serial Killer: Ian Griffiths, at least in that he has a long string of murders, although Strike acknowledges that it's more about Griffiths killing people when they are no longer of use to him, or in the case of his not-really-adopted daughter Chloe, after impregnating her.
• Sexy Backless Outfit: Kim wears a sexy backless dress when she and Strike follow an investigative target to a party. It's a fancy dress party, but still, she's trying to seduce him.
• Sexy Sweater Girl: Cormoran has to look away when Kim Cochran, one of his detectives, yawns and stretches at work, revealing a "snugly fitting black sweater." This is the beginning of Kim's campaign to seduce her boss.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Kim, who is sucking up to Strike, gets a look at him shaved and in a suit, as opposed to his usual rumpled self, and says "Wow, you brush up well."
• Shout-Out: Pat names the three fish in the fish tank Cormoran, Robin, and Travolta. When Travolta dies, Pat gets a new fish and names it Elton.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Cormoran uses this very phrase to describe several of the romantic pairings in the case: Rupert and Decima (separated when they found out about the Surprise Incest), Jade and Niall Semple (a traumatized Niall killed himself), and Tyler and Jolanda (both murdered).
• Surprise Incest: The reason why Rupert Fleetwood, who as it turns out is not the body in the vault, ran away. He found out that he and Decima Mullins, his lover and the mother of his baby, are half-siblings.
• Vapor Wear: Kim shows up for the party she and Strike are crashing for work in a red dress that shows her nipples.
  She was very obviously braless.