Category: Literary Lists

#6Degrees Six Degrees of Separation: From What I Loved to Meet Me at the Museum

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It’s the first Saturday of a new month which means it’s time for 6 Degrees of Separation!

pile of hardbound books with white and pink floral ceramic teacup and saucer
Photo by Ylanite Koppens on Pexels.com

Here’s how it works: 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

9780340682388This month’s starting book is What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt which I’ve not read but, according to the blurb, it’s the story of a life-long friendship between two men set in the art world of New York.

Also opening in the art world of New York is Fake Like Me by Babs Bourland. After a fire in her New York studio, a young artist gains a place at Pine City, an exclusive but rather creepy retreat set on a lake. It’s run by a notorious collective of successful artists, one of whose members has recently died.

Another book that features a young woman leaving New York to travel to a remote lakeside location and experiencing more than she bargained for is The Room by the Lake by Emma Dibdin. 

In Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke, Texas Ranger Darren Matthews becomes involved in the search for a young white boy lost on the vast Lake Caddo in east Texas. The title of the book is from a blues song.

Songs, in this case by The Beatles, are the inspiration for the titles of Alan Johnson’s series of memoirs. In The Long and Winding Road he charts his rise from postman to positions in the highest levels of the UK government.

Staying with the postal theme, The Lost Letters of William Woolf by Helen Cullen concerns a so-called letter detective employed in the Dead Letters Depot who spends his days trying to reunite lost letters with their intended recipients.

Meet Me At the Museum by Ann Youngson is an epistolary novel in which two people, Danish Professor Anders Larsen and East Anglian farmer’s wife, Tina Hopgood, conduct a long distance correspondence as a result of a shared interest in the Tollund Man.

This month we’ve travelled from New York to Denmark (in letter form, at least). Where did your chain take you this month?

Fake Like MeTheRoombytheLakeHeaven My HomeThe Long and Winding RoadThe Lost Letters of William WoolfMeet Me at the Museum

#TopTenTuesday Reasons I Love…Historical Crime Mysteries

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Top Ten Tuesday newTop Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post. Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists. Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

This week’s topic is Reasons Why I Love [insert your favorite book title, genre, author, etc. here]. As regular followers of my blog will know, I love historical fiction and have a particular fondness for historical crime mysteries. Below you can find some of the reasons.

  1. Obvious really, but you get all the elements of crime fiction – a crime (or crimes), an investigation, suspects, clues, a final reveal and maybe a few twists along the way – but with the addition of a historical setting.
  2. The story is usually set against the background of actual historical events even if it departs on occasions from what really happened (or the order in which it happened) for the sake of the plot.
  3. You can learn the same fascinating facts about how people lived that you would from reading a history book but with a gripping plot.
  4. You are transported to a different period in time – the sights, sounds and usually smells!
  5. It will commonly have a mix of real and fictional characters.  For example, no historical mystery set in Elizabethan times seems to be complete without an appearance by either a member of the Cecil family or Sir Francis Walsingham!
  6. You are likely to come across some great, often unconventional (for the times), crime busting partnerships.  For example, Nicholas Shelby and Bianca Merton in S. W. Perry’s Jackdaw Mysteries series.
  7. The author is forced to use their imagination to depict crime investigation and detection without the benefit of modern scientific techniques. No CSI-style DNA testing!
  8. A different time period also brings other limitations that can enhance the plot: slower communication, more primitive means of transport, social constraints.
  9. Although it’s great to experience the streets of Medieval or Elizabethan London, a historical crime mystery can also transport you to other geographical locations. Barcelona, Marrakech, New York anyone?
  10. Finally, it’s surprising how much contemporary resonance there can be in a historical mystery.  For example, pestilence in a capital city with entertainment places closed down.  No, not now – Elizabethan London. Fake news used to spread misinformation? No, not now – pre-WW2 Germany.

I’m going to finish by sharing some of my favourite historical crime series. I’ve included only those where I’ve read more than one book in the series and listed only those titles I’ve read and reviewed. There may be (almost certainly are) other books in the series not shown that are still in my TBR pile or wishlist. Links from the titles will take you to my review.

20200517_103155The Tom Wilde series by Rory Clements (published by Zaffre)
Corpus Nucleus Nemesis  Hitler’s Secret

none-so-blindThe Teifi Valley Coroner series by Alis Hawkins (published by The Dome Press)
None So Blind

The Justice Flanagan series by Paddy Hirsch (published by Corvus)
The Devil’s Half Mile Hudson’s Kill

20200517_103215The Gower Street Detective and Betty Church series by M. R. C. Kasasian (published by Head of Zeus)
Dark Dawn Over Steep House Betty Church & The Suffolk Vampire

The Nighthawk series by Jim Kelly (published by Allison & Busby)
The Great Darkness The Mathematical Bridge

The Gregor Reinhardt series by Luke McCallin (published by No Exit Press)
The Pale House The Ashes of Berlin

20200229_141812-1The Jackdaw Mysteries series by S W Perry (published by Corvus)
The Angel’s Mark The Serpent’s Mark The Saracen’s Mark

20200517_103350The Cornish Mysteries series by Katherine Stansfield (published by Allison & Busby)
The Magpie Tree The Mermaid’s Call

The Ingo Finch series by Jeff Dawson (published by Canelo)
No Ordinary Killing The Cold North Sea

Of course, there are plenty of other historical crime series I could recommend including those by C J Sansom, S J Parris, Philip Kerr and David Ashton. OK, I’ll stop now before I have you spending all your money…