A Lake and Shed Reading of Lethal White

Today’s Lake and Shed framed conversation is about the fourth Cormoran Strike novel, Lethal White. Nick discusses the embedded class struggle in the book and its roots in Rowling’s background before dropping the bomb of the real world identity of Jack O’Kent and his unhappy family. John is so taken aback by this revelation that Nick has to prompt the Shed portion of the conversation with a fun history of the Sonia Friedman production of Ibsen’s Rosmersholm on London’s West End, a show starring Thom Burke as Rosmer and which ended just before Bronte Studios beginning the filming of Lethal White. John explains why Rowling might have had something to do with the teevee C. B. Strike gaining a memorized knowledge of this play before filming the fourth book’s adaptation.

New to the Lake and Shed Kanreki Birthday series? Here’s what we’re doing:

On 31 July 2025, Joanne Murray, aka J. K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith, will be celebrating her 60th birthday. This celebration is considered a ‘second birth’ in Japan or Kanreki because it is the completion of the oriental astrological cycle. To mark JKR’s Kanreki, Dr John Granger and Nick Jeffery, both Nipponophiles, are reading through Rowling’s twenty-one published works and reviewing them in light of the author’s writing process, her ‘Lake and Shed’ metaphor. The ‘Lake’ is the biographical source of her inspiration; the ‘Shed’ is the alocal place of her intentional artistry, in which garage she transforms the biographical stuff provided by her subconscious mind into the archetypal stories that have made her the most important author of her age. You can hear Nick and John discuss this process and their birthday project at the first entry in this series of posts: Happy Birthday, JKR! A Lake and Shed Celebration of her Life and Work.

Tomorrow? Another work with Rowling’s name on the cover that is the not the work she wrote! Nick and John take a Lake and Shed long look at the second screenplay for the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them film series. On the Lake side of things, Nick explores the Johnny Depp casting scandal and the lead-up in 2018 to the 2019 Tweet Heard Round the World. John explains that the cut scenes from this dog’s mess of a movie point that the shooting script, i.e., what Rowling wrote and approved before David Yates butchered the film in the editing room, was all about Leta Lestrange. More important, John makes the Shed point that every Rowling book features a text of some kind that the characters struggle to understand — and that Crimes of Grindelwald has ten of these, a veritable library of interior texts to interpret.

Links to posts mentioned in today’s Lake and Shed conversation for further reading:

• Henrik Ibsen’s ‘Rosmersholm’

• Every ‘Rosmersholm’ White Horse Reference (Odd Sverre Hove)

• London Production of Rosmersholm: Starring Tom Burke (Cormoran Strike)

• London Production of Rosmersholm (2): Starring Tom Burke (Cormoran Strike)

• The ‘Reading, Writing, Rowling’ podcast on Lethal White (Kathryn McDaniel, Louise Freeman, Beatrice Groves, John Granger)

• The Top Ten Things We’ve Learned About Lethal White Since Publication Day

• The Three Things about J. K. Rowling’s Cormoran Strike Novels Every Harry Potter Fan Should Know

• Lethal White: The Ring Structure

• Lethal White: The Cratylic Names

• Lethal White: Autobiographical Elements

• Lethal White: Flints and Head Scratchers

Lethal White as Turning Point of Seven Part Ring Cycle

• Does Lethal White Foreshadow Running Grave? You Betcha

• The Missing Page Mystery

• The Missing Page Mystery, Part 2

• Does Lethal White Echo Goblet of Fire?

• Lethal White: Every Goblet of Fire Link?

• Lethal White: Cuckoo’s Calling Retold?

• The Cuckoo’s Calling Echoes (25+)

• Seven More Cuckoo’s Calling Links

• Lethal White: The Big Change at the Turn (End of the Strike Agency in Strike5?)

Literary Alchemy and the Mythic Context

• M. Evan Willis: The Mythic Context and Hermetic Meaning of Cormoran Strike

• Guest Post: Mythological Leda Strike – Cormoran, Zeus, Castor and Pollux (Joanne Gray; prepublication)

• Guest Post: Rowling’s Mercurial Hermetic Artistry from Snape to Strike (M. Evan Willis; prepublication)

• The Swan Symbolism

• More Strike Swans: Historical and Film Connections (Elizabeth Baird-Hardy)

• Harry Potter and The Hanged Man: Part 1 Rowling’s Most Loaded Tarot Reference

• Harry Potter and The Hanged Man: Part 2 The Historical and Occult Interpretations

• Harry Potter and The Hanged Man: Part 3 Its Meaning in Rowling’s Written Work

On ‘White Horses’

• The White Horse Gallows: Karmic Legacy of Empire in the UK?

• Charlotte Campbell: The Broodmare of Lethal White (Louise Freeman)

• Every ‘Rosmersholm’ White Horse Reference (Odd Sverre Hove)

• Taylor Swift’s ‘White Horses’ (Louise Freeman)

• Lethal White: The White Horse Evidence (pre-publication list of pointers)

• Lethal White Horses (Pre-publication; Beatrice Groves, MuggleNet)

Series Mystery Possibilities

• Lethal White: Is Strike Rokeby’s Son? The Dates Don’t Seem To Match Up

• Bookending the Past: Cormoran Strike’s Real Father? (Joanne Gray)

• Lethal White: The Daddy Chiswell Evidence (Joanne Gray)

Literary Allusions and Influences

• Henrik Ibsen’s ‘Rosmersholm’

• Every ‘Rosmersholm’ White Horse Reference (Odd Sverre Hove)

• London Production of Rosmersholm: Starring Tom Burke (Cormoran Strike)

• London Production of Rosmersholm (2): Starring Tom Burke (Cormoran Strike)

• Agatha Christie’s The Moving Finger

• Allingham: The Fashion in Shrouds

• Rowling’s Favorite Poem Found in Oz : Whitman’s “Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances”

• Dorothy Sayers’ Murder Must Advertise, Ian Rankin, P. D. James (ChrisC, pre-publication)

• Cormoran and Robin: Echoes of Homer’s Odysseus and Penelope? (Joanne Gray)

• Cormoran and Robin: Echoes of Homer’s Odysseus and Penelope (2) Joanne Gray

• Ben Jonson’s ‘Every Man In His Humor’ A Meaningful Model for Strike Stories? (prepublication)

• Ian Rankin and Cormoran Strike (prepublication)

• The Three Fates Meet The Weird Sisters: Cormoran Strike, Harry Potter, and the Question of Fate, Free Will, and Choice (prepublication)

The National Health Service Sub Plot

• Lethal White: Ghosts of Aneurin Bevan? Lorelei Bevan, Dodgy Doc, and the NHS

• Lethal White and the NHS: Rowling Speaks

Miscellaneous:

• Marketing Efforts and Sales

• Most Common Pub Names

• The Personal Assistant Drama

• Possibility Two: Court Ordered Silence

• The Robert Glenister Audiobook

• Lethal White Wins CrimeFest Award

• On ‘Doom Bar Ale’

• BBC1 Adaptation a ‘Go’

• A Review of the Legacy and Online Media Book Reviews

Rowling Interviews, Twitter

• Pre-Publication: The Lethal White Music Playlist (Louise Freeman)

• The Graham Norton Interview

• On ‘Galbraith Meets Graham Norton’ (Beatrice Groves)

• Rowling as Labour’s Tweeting Prophet

• New Political Maturity from Rowling?

Prepublication Predictions and Speculation

• A Lethal White ‘White Horse’ Round-Up: An Explanation of ‘Heroin Dark Lord 1.0’

In a nutshell, the theory is that Jonny Rokeby was responsible for Leda Strike’s death, a ‘hit’ that he arranged to insure that she would never reveal what she knew about crimes he committed as a Deadbeat, crimes to include murder, in conjunction with heroin and the drug trade. The ‘White Horse’ that Rowling has been teasing readers with this past year may involve an actual stallion but the larger meaning of the clues is heroin, for which ‘white horse’ is a street euphemism.

• Lethal White and Strike Speculation 101: The Trouble with JKR/Galbraith Dates (Heroin Dark Lord 2.0: The IED Explosion)

• Super Lethal White Speculation Podcast! Reading, Writing Rowling, Episode 14: Cormoran Strike – and Harry Potter?

The thirteen HogwartsProfessor birthday videos posted thus far in this series can be read at the links below:

• A Lake and Shed Reading of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

• A Lake and Shed Reading of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

• A Lake and Shed Reading of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

• A Lake and Shed Reading of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

• A Lake and Shed Reading of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

• A Lake and Shed Reading of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

• A Lake and Shed Reading of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

• A Lake and Shed Reading of Casual Vacancy

• A Lake and Shed Reading of Cuckoo’s Calling

• A Lake and Shed Reading of The Silkworm

• A Lake and Shed Reading of Career of Evil

• A Lake and Shed Reading of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

• A Lake and Shed Reading of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Screenplay)