Category: 6Degrees

Here’s how it works: on the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own six degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the  comments section of each month’s post.   You can also check out links to posts on Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees

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This month’s starting book is Where Am I Now? by Mara Wilson. Click on the title to read the book description on Goodreads.

My first link is to a book, in a completely different genre, which also has a question as its title – Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? by Agatha Christie.  In the book, amateur sleuths, Bobby Jones and Lady Frances Derwent, team up to solve the mystery of  a dying man’s last words – the aforementioned question in the title.

Another pair of amateur sleuths feature in Francis Durbridge’s Paul Temple series, this time a married couple.  Originally created as a radio series, in the first book, Send For Paul Temple, Paul and his wife, usually referred to by her nickname ‘Steve’, are called in by the police to help solve a series of diamond robberies.  The book also features some enigmatic dying words – ‘The Green Finger’ – this time uttered by a  night-watchman attacked during one of the raids.

Diamonds are at the heart of James Bond’s fourth outing in Diamonds Are Forever by Ian Fleming, in which Bond seeks to infiltrate a diamond smuggling gang.   Ian Fleming liked to spend time in his holiday home in Jamaica, a house called Goldeneye.  Amongst the many possible inspirations for the name of the house is reputed to be the title of Carson McCullers’ novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye.

Carson McCullers’ most well-known book is, of course, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, the story of John Singer, a lonely deaf-mute.

A deaf man also features in Colin Dexter’s The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn, in which Inspector Morse investigates the murder of Quinn who was poisoned at a drinks party held at his workplace, the Foreign Examinations Board in Oxford.  The Inspector Morse books were  made into a successful Granada TV series, in which Colin Dexter famously made brief non-speaking appearances in some episodes.  (He’s in the background at the drinks party in this one.)

Another person famous for their brief appearances in films was director, Alfred Hitchcock.  For example, in his adaptation of Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith, he’s seen struggling to get on the train carrying a cello in a case.

 

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Next month’s starting book is The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton.

Here’s how it works: on the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own six degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the comments section of each month’s post.   You can also check out links to posts on Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees

This month’s starting book is Atonement by Ian McEwan. Click on the title to read the book description on Goodreads or my review, as appropriate.

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In Atonement by Ian McEwan an innocent mistake results in a false accusation that has far-reaching consequences.

A false accusation is also central to the story in Terence Rattigan’s The Winslow Boy, in this case an accusation of the theft of a postal order.  During the resulting court case, the eminent QC engaged to defend the boy must discredit the evidence of an expert witness called for the prosecution.

The need to rebut the evidence given by a witness for the prosecution is also central to the Agatha Christie story, Witness for the Prosecution but this time the case involves an allegation of murder.  If you can, do find a copy of the 1957 film version directed by Billy Wilder, starring Charles Laughton as barrister, Sir Wilfred, Tyrone Power as the accused man, Leonard Vole, and Marlene Dietrich as his wife, Christine.

Personally, when I think of barristers in fiction, my mind always turns to John Mortimer’s sublime creation, Horace Rumpole, memorably brought to life by Leo McKern in the TV series Rumpole of the Bailey. Famously, Rumpole referred to his wife, Hilda, as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, a reference to Ayesha, the heroine of H. Rider Haggard’s book, She.

It wouldn’t be a Six Degrees on What Cathy Read Next without the inclusion of a John Buchan book.  In his most famous novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps, the hero, Richard Hannay, seeks shelter at an inn, in a chapter entitled ‘The Adventure of the Literary Innkeeper’.   Hannay recounts his recent exciting experiences to the young innkeeper who remarks, “By God!  It is all pure Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle.”

John Buchan wrote The Thirty-Nine Steps in Broadstairs, Kent whilst recuperating from an operation.   In The Wench is Dead by Colin Dexter, Inspector Morse is also confined to bed following an operation and occupies himself by investigating a ‘cold case’, a sensational murder case, and possibly miscarriage of justice, which took place in Oxford one hundred years earlier.

So today we’ve travelled from one false accusation to another by way of the witness box, a lost kingdom in Africa and the Scottish highlands.

Next month’s starting book is Where Am I Now? by Mara Wilson.