Collection of errors seen in The Hallmarked Man (Whole book spoilers)

How many have you found?

The is the post to list any continuity errors or other consistency issues in The Hallmarked Man. I haven’t caught a huge number on the first reading, but it often takes multiple reading to notice most of them. Spoilers ahead.

• The first one I saw was Strike and Nina’s statement that they had slept together twice. Actually, it was three times, once after the party at Lucy’s, once when he went to her apartment for dinner and once whne he went around to her house to distract himself after Charlotte’s wedding.

• The age of “fortyish” for Marco Ricci is way too young. He was 12 in 1974, when Margot disappeared, so born in 1962. By 2017 he’d be pushing 55.

• They are back to calling the test Rokeby took when Strike was five a DNA test, when that kind of testing was not available until Strike was about 12.

  • This is particularly annoying because in TB the testing was corrected to “paternity” (which would have been a blood antigen test in the 1970’s) and even has Dr. Gupta explicitly state that DNA tests were not available in the 1970’s.

• Ian Griffiths is supposed to be unusually short--- only about five feet tall. It does not seem likely that witnesses like Mandy and Gretchen and Todd’s neighbor who saw “Oz”, even at a distance, would notice his curly hair and sunglasses but not his unusually short stature.

  • Todd’s neighbor is particularly odd, given that all he can say is that “Oz” was not as tall as Strike, as if 5 feet tall is anywhere close to 6 foot four.

    • Could this mean that Wade King, or some other of Griffith’s henchmen, called on, and perhaps later killed Todd?

• At the end, they ask if anyone has “contacted Belgium for Jolanda’s DNA” in order to ID “Chloe’s” body. It would presumably be Reata’s DNA that the Belgium authorities have.

• I hope Uncle Ted’s priest did not get confiscated by the police as evidence.

• I also thought it odd that there was no mention of efforts to get Maes out of prison in light of this new information.

I’ll be adding to the list if I spy any more; in the meantime, please add any you spot to the comments.

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Update: 10/4/2025 Quite a few more have come up, many spotted by eagle-eyed readers. In the interest of having a master list I’ll add them here.

1. Sophia had an OnlyFans account in July 2016; the site did not exist until November of that year.

2. Masonic DCI Malcolm Truman is called Malcolm Turnbull once; Malcoln Turnbull is an ex-Prime Minister of Australia.

3. Robin’s email cancelling the Scotland trip tells Strike she’ll drive up to Ironbridge and meet him on Wednesday. Then she closes with “See you Tuesday.”

   1. Of course, if she had said “See you next Tuesday” I’d have thought she was making a point, given how angry she was with him at the time.

   2. It is also possible this was a Freudian slip on Robin’s part; she was subconsciously wanting to be with Strike on Tuesday, and at the Lake District Hotel on Tuesday night.

4. Midge says she has had rebound sex with Ellen of “WishIwaswithEllen” fame. Unless she moved, Ellen lives in Manchester, a four-hour drive away.

   1. I’m told lesbians are well known for long distance relationships, but that seems pretty far to drive given Midge’s heavy work schedule.

5. Margot’s disappearance was described as a 30 year old cold case; it was actually 40.

   1. Although, this would make Marco Ricci’s age closer to correct (see above).

6. Strike should have had a rabies shot after the dog bite, in addition to the tetanus. Update: turns out, the UK is lucky enough to be rabies-free!

7. The Shacklewell Ripper is referred to three times as “the strangler,” including once by Strike. Laing never strangled anyone, he stabbed his victims, hence the “Ripper” name.

8. The Candy story was a lie, of course, but it would have been more believable in a different year. She claims “It was in 2013 and I thought he must be a good guy; he’d caught that strangler...” Assuming the agency did not catch a hooker-strangler in 2013 of which we’ve never been told, this is likely Shacklewell Ripper Donald Laing, who was a full two years earlier, in 2011. By 2013, Strike would have been best known for solving the murder of a government minister by his wife and son.

9. Also, Robin says she and Strike were not as close in 2013, While they have certainly grown closer over the years, they were full partners by 2013 and certainly grew closer in late 2012, when Robin moved in with Nick and Ilsa and they socialized regularly with the “double dates.” By 2014, they were “best friends.”

   1. Robin was a full partner, with full access to the agency accounts and in charge when Strike was in Cornwall with Joan, by August 2013. It would have been hard to hide a hired sex worker used for entrapment from her; she has always known the details of every case they had. The story would have been much more believable, at least to Robin, if it had happened during the skipped year in Lethal White, after the wedding, when Strike and Robin were not close.

   2. Of course, Culpepper has no way of knowing these details, but the fact that Robin even considered it could be true tells us how far off the rails she’s gone.

10. In THM, we are told that the Gorilla Mask Man had attacked six other women in addition to Robin, two of whom had died, which means four others survived the attack. But, in TRG, Robin told Prudence that only two other women had survived the attacks.

11. I am told that “Gretchen” is not likely to be the given name of an Austrian woman

12. “Not proven” is a verdict in Scotland, but not in England.

13. Chapter 69: Robin meets up with Barclay on Thursday, January 19th to talk to Fiona Freeman, and Barclay tells her he got sick off the prawn sandwich “a couple of weeks ago.” The night he got sick was actually Saturday, January 14th, barely 5 days before.

14. Strike never seems to realize that “Rena Liddell” also sounds a lot like “Rita Linda.” Nor does it occur to him that the RL in Semple’s letter could be Ralph Lawrence.

15. Linda mentions that Carmen is home alone with baby Dirk in Chapter 75. Then, in Chapter 86 (two weeks later, book time) we are told Dirk has just been released from the hospital following his premature birth.