The Silkworm: Chapters 30-34:

Burger King, more creepy marble sculptures and the Michael Fancourt Show.

Yes, work matters have me falling behind on blogging again. I'm doing my best to catch up; I'm going to try to post at least every other day until I get caught up.

Chapter 30: The Burger King conversation is one that I look back on with special fondness, mainly because it is simultaneously precursor, echo and inversion to one of my favorite from the entire series: the breakdown on the verge and the subsequent chat at the racetrack of Lethal White. Here we see Strike giving Robin a bit of "tough love"-- bluntly pointing out the problems her working as a detective with him will create for her marriage, and showing remarkable insight into the tensions her work has already created for them. Even Robin's sensation of "being unexpectedly winded" foreshadows her full-scale panic attack on the verge. Here, Strike points out that "you're getting married to someone who hates you doing it!"; on the verge, Robin will deliver the welcome news that she is getting un-married from the same man. Here, Strike tells her "You're the one who is going to have to work it out;" on the verge, he is bold enough to imagine "a few corrective measures from which he thought Matthew might benefit. But every time I read this, I am inwardly urging Robin to get that damn coffee to go.

We see the second example of the automotive conversation with Ilsa jinx, as our heroes run into the road-blocking accident immediately after Ilsa's call.

Strike gets to at least partially repay Robin for her masterful driving by using the short-cut tips he learned from Nic's cabbie-dad's father to get her to the train on time. I'm a little surprised this knowledge hasn't been used again in a subsequent book. But, I also wonder exactly how this information got passed on. It seems the type of thing you would "pick up" more readily if you are actually driving around in the car, not being told second-hand. Did Nick and Strike regularly ride shotgun with Mr. Herbert?

Chapter 31: This chapter takes us through Strike's snowed-in Saturday at home, while Robin is in Yorkshire. He has plenty of time, for once, to lounge around his flat and ruminate about the case, and on other subjects. We hear the story of his teenage trip to Australia, and Dave Polworth's encounter with the shark. It is interesting to hear the story of the shark's stiletto teeth, juxtaposed, shortly thereafter, by the image of the "willowy-looking figure in the black coat, fingering a knife, and waiting for Strike on the snowy street outside. Am I the only one who thinks of this song during this chapter?

We also hear of Brother Al for the first time, and get what was, for me, a rather surprising willingness of Strike's to ask for a favor. He also arranges to meet Nina again, to get more information on Jerry Waldegrave.

Chapter 32: In this chapter, we meet one of the most important recurring characters in the series, the Ellacott family Land Rover, soon to be Robin's. I must say, the description of the town, the church and the square makes me eager to visit Masham. I wonder if they get a substantial amount of Strike-related tourism? Looking back at this scene, it is easy to see it as not so much a funeral for Mrs. Cunliffe, but as a preview of the death of Robin's love for Matthew. Between Sarah Shadlock turning up with her "lascivious" greeting, Robin's wandering mind during the service, her morbid thoughts of Owen Quine's disemboweled corpse and the bloody lorry driver, and her reflections on how Mrs. Cunliffe had never really liked her, this hardly seems like an enthusiastic bride. Notably, there is no indication that Robin is in any way disappointed abut the postponed wedding. Instead we get this:

The statue of Sir Marmaduke Wyvil was facing Robin....staring at her in his Jacobean dress, life-sized and horizontal on his marble shelf, propped up on his elbow to face the congregation. His wife lay beneath him in an identical pose. They were oddly real in their irreverent poses, cushions beneath their elbows to keep their marble bones comfortable, and above them, in the spandrels, allegorical figures of death and immortality. Til death do us part...and her thoughts drifted again; she and Matthew, tied together forever until they died...no, not tied...don't think tied.... What's wrong with you?

Once again, the author describes real statues, and they really are a bit creepy, all the more so for the bars that make them look jailed. Robin is associating her marriage with two figures sealed forever in a marble tomb, and with the wife perpetually encased beneath him, mimicking his pose as if she has nothing better to do than be a reflection of him. This is certainly a bad omen; these sculptures make Robin feel nearly as uneasy as Daniel Chard's dissected angel did. And, if we remember the drinks at the King's Arms, Strike recognized Matthew as a poser from the start.

This chapter closes with the first of multiple emergencies conveyed by cell phone, Pippa Midgley's first knife attack on Strike. The others were Laing's attack on Robin and Charlotte's suicide. That seems a lot, does it not?

Chapter 33: We flash back to Denmark Street and the knife attack, which results not in a stabbing but in another wrenching of Strike's bad knee. Rather than call the police, he continues to Nina's. For some reason, he chooses not to tell her of the attack (which might have induced more sympathy) but describes it as an accident. Strike learns little about Waldegrave except that he is drinking and still furious with Liz Tassel. The most important clue is that Liz "looks ghastly." And Al curdles the dinner date by returning Strike's call and agreeing to dinner at the River Cafe.

Chapter 34: Really, Matthew, no one's going to fault you for going to the pub. Call it a second wake for dear old Mum.

No such luck. Robin and Linda are watching Michael Fancourt be a misogynistic jerk on TV, interested for very different reasons. Robin lets it slip about the accident on the M5 and his forced to admit the trip to Devon, so Matthew gets to be a misogynistic jerk as well.

FYI, I thought there was something fishy about the "Eff-Ellie" from the start, but could not put it together until Strike explains it during the Fancourt interview. I must say, I love Linda's reactions both to Matthew and Fancourt here. I get that Robin felt a need to apologize on the day of Mathhew's mother's funeral, but re-reading this makes me even more eager to get the guy dumped for good.