New Sleep Tight Evangeline Twitter Header, Robert Raikes Statue:

Seven good reasons to be excited.

My friend and occasional fellow blogger Kurt quickly identified JKR/RG’s new twitter header today as a statue of Robert Raikes at London’s Victoria Embankment Gardens. Robert joins the cities of York and Portsmouth, some creepy dolls, a treehouse and a charm bracelet chock full of clues as header-hints given to date to the next book in the Strike series, which the author claims is 60% complete at Chapter 74. Let’s take a look at this latest clue and some reasons to be excited.

Robert Raikes was an 18th century newspaperman, philanthropist and humanitarian, best known for his work in prison reform and as a major force in the start of the Sunday School movement, a program initially begun for the purpose of teaching impoverished boys reading and the Bible, and hopefully reducing the chances of their winding up in the brutal and appalling prison system of the day. There are multiple exciting things this image could mean for the next book:

• Considering Raikes’ work with deprived children alongside the images of the creepy dolls and the treehouse makes me think it more likely that the core mystery could involve exploited children in some way, perhaps trafficking, sexual exploitation or kidnapping.

  • Trivia about Raikes: He used an eyeglass and, Mad-Eye-Moody-like, convinced the children he could see through walls and use it to tell if they had been bad or good.

• If Galbraith chooses to bring in some current events of 2017, he could consider the Charlie Taylor Report, published in December 2016, which made multiple recommendations for reform in the UK Juvenile Justice system, including replacing large, prison-style Young Offender Institutions with smaller, education-focused “Secure Schools.”

• The Big Ring Chiasmus model predicts connections between STE and The Silkworm. In The Silkworm, Strike visited Leonora Quine at the dreadful Holloway Women’s Prison, which was shut down only a few years later. Could a visit to a similarly grim Young Offender Institution be in the cards for STE?

• The Leapfrog model also predicts connections to Book 7. One of the highlights of The Running Grave was Strike seeking comfort in the St. John the Baptist church, comfort that was only possible because of the exposure he had to traditional Christianity through the Sunday School he attended when living with Ted and Joan. It would be fascinating if the Raikes statue turns out to be a pointer to those childhood memories.

  • I continue to hope that we’ll see another Easter Sunday ashes sprinkling in STE.

• As others on Twitter have pointed out, the statue itself is located very near the entrance to the Savoy Hotel, though, personally, I hope we see none of that or anything else to do with Bijou Watkins ever, ever again.

It is also possible that, like the various Highgate Cemetery graves that were shown on Twitter prior to the publication of The Ink Black Heart, the significance is not so much Raikes, but the Victoria Embarkment Gardens itself. Other people honored with statues there include John Stuart Mills, Robert Burns, Sir Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame), temperance advocate Sir Wilfred Lawson, industrialist Isambard Kingdom Brunel and assorted war and military memorials. Maybe we’ll see Strike and Jack on an outing there? Or, could a body turn up in one of the flower beds, under the famous York Watergate, or worse, in the children’s play area?

• Finally, there are a number of fountains in the gardens. The return of water elements could be part of the cleansing albedo experience I am hoping for in this book.