Why Cormoran Strike Is A Grown-Up Harry Potter

Just about everyone knows the boy wizard, Harry Potter. But did you also know that writing under the pen name, Robert Galbraith, JK Rowling has created a hardboiled detective character  named Cormoran Strike who is, by my way of thinking, a grown-up version of Harry Potter? Harry and Cormoran number among my favorite literary characters.

Following the success of the Harry Potter series, Rowling wrote an adult novel in 2012 entitled The Casual Vacancy, which enjoyed neither the success nor the enthusiasm of her earlier work. Undaunted, Rowling published an adult detective novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling, in May 2015, under the pen name, ‘Robert Galbraith,’ testing whether the book could gain traction under a pseudonym rather than under her (by-now famous) actual name. Supposedly, the publishing house which accepted Cuckoo’s Calling didn’t know that author Robert Galbraith, described only as an ex-military officer, was in fact, JK Rowling.

The book enjoyed favorable reviews though as of July 2015 had only sold around 1,500 copies. When news leaked in July 2015 of Galbraith’s real identity, sales took off. Rowling has since written six installments of the CB Strike detective series, with a seventh book, The Running Grave, expected to appear in September of this year.

Cormoran Strike is a 6’3”, 225 pound, private detective with short, curly black hair who looks fairly menacing, even at rest. He is raised by a neglectful if loving mother who drags her son through various flophouses while living as a ‘super-groupie’ for a rock star named Jonny Rokeby. Rokeby is the front man for a 1970s band appropriately named “The Deadbeats.” He fathers Cormoran, but otherwise has no interest or involvement with his son (that is, until his son becomes a famous detective later in life). Cormoran’s wayward mother dies at an early age under mysterious circumstances and her death haunts Cormoran throughout the series.

Cormoran manages to get admitted to Oxford and studies for two years before dropping out and joining Britain’s Royal Military Police. He serves in Afghanistan until an IED blows off half of his right leg. Scarred by his upbringing as well as the trauma of war, but drawn to law enforcement, Strike creates his own detective agency and takes on a plucky assistant with her own share of internal demons, named Robin Ellacott. (Robin feels like a stronger character than either Harry Potter’s Ron and/or Hermione, and merits a whole other discussion). By the third novel in the series, Robin has risen from temp assistant to partner. Both Robin and Strike have a talent for seeing what others don’t and cracking cases that have baffled the police. The two have great chemistry, are clearly soulmates, and ‘will they or won’t they become romantically involved’ becomes one of the endearing themes in the series.

I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for literary orphans my whole life, beginning with my childhood comic book favs Superman and Spiderman. Roald Dahl’s Matilda might be my favorite book of all time and the Harry Potter novels were milestone events for me and my sons. My mother’s experiences as an orphan in 1930s and early 1940s New York City and Boston were no doubt formative for me. Her stories of life in foster care and orphanages are always with me.

Unsurprisingly, when I got around to writing my 2022 debut novel, Eddie and the Vegetarian Vampire, I created two main protagonists who are also orphans. The novel is set in a Catholic orphanage in Boston in the year 1944. Eddie is a twelve year old with his nose always in a book who has no idea how he wound up in an orphanage. He discovers that the cute bat he has been feeding in the basement is, in fact, a starving, though kindly, vegetarian vampire named Count Bloodless. The Count himself is an orphan, rejected by his family for being vegetarian. He immigrates to Boston (“Beantown”) in the hopes of finding a regular source of vegetarian food. Eddie helps provide that food and in return, the kindly vampire helps Eddie unlock the secret of his past.

I tried to imitate the character themes of Roald Dahl’s Matilda/Rowling’s Harry Potter/Cormoran Strike: plucky, resilient orphans who start with nothing and fight their way to a better life through their commitment to doing the right thing. Think Cosette in Les Miserables, Oliver Twist in Dickens, Anne of Green Gables, for a few additional examples, and virtually all comic book heroes, from Batman to Black Panther.

Conflict is essential to plot and orphans have always provide a ready vehicle for writers of fiction. A worse fate for a child can hardly be imagined. Orphans provide a wide story arc, a built-in conflict, a protagonist who starts out low and must re-invent for himself/herself a sense of belonging and identity. They have little to offer the world except their courage and loyalty.

Industrialized countries have long ago traded orphanages for foster care - in the USA, orphanages were phased out by the 1950s - but the essential challenges to the children in those systems remain the same.

Some commentators view the orphan story as a stale trope, an overly familiar character type which must be presented in an inventive way to remain interesting. Personally I don’t find this critique compelling. After all, all fiction must be presented in an inventive way to attract readers in the competitive world of publishing. Orphan-related fiction is no different.

Though Harry Potter is a child and Cormoran Strike an adult, and there is no magic in the Strike series, they have much in common. I don’t think it a stretch to see Cormoran as a kind of grown-up Harry. Both love their mothers and grow up neglected. Both have a soft spot for the vulnerable and don’t back down. Both are scarred by their past. Neither follows the rules. Both are thrust into fame without seeking it.

For both characters, life is not easy and the painful past is always present. Yet they resist the hate and hopelessness that could easily consume them.

Clearly JK Rowling/Robert Galbraith connects with her protagonists Harry Potter and Cormoran Strike. One could say she loves them.  

Count me a lover as well.