It’s time again for Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month starts with the book that I ended my last Six Degrees chain with, which was The Hog’s Back Mystery by Freeman Wills Crofts. I’ve recently finished reading this British Library Crime Classic, first published in 1933, during the Golden Age of detective fiction between the two world wars. Dr James Earle and his wife live near the Hog’s Back, a ridge in the North Downs in the beautiful Surrey countryside. When Dr Earle disappears from his cottage, Inspector French of Scotland Yard is called in to investigate. At first he suspects a simple domestic intrigue – and begins to uncover a web of romantic entanglements beneath the couple’s peaceful rural life.

I’m starting my chain with High Rising by Angela Thirkell, another book first published in 1933. Set in the 1930s it’s an entertaining and witty social comedy, in the fictional county of Barsetshire, borrowed from Trollope. Laura Morland is a widow with four sons, who supports herself by writing novels, which she knows are not ‘in any sense of the word, literature‘ but which have appeal.

My second link is to Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie, in which one of the characters, Ariadne Oliver, also writes fiction. The victim is Mr Shaitana, a collector of snuff boxes, Egyptian antiquities and murderers.This story has just four suspects and any one of them ‘given the right circumstances‘ might have committed the crime. It’s also a book first published in the 1930s, that is 1936..

My third link is via ‘card’ to A Card from Angela Carter by Susannah Clapp. She and Angela had been friends for a number of years. This book uses the postcards Angela sent to her to form a sort of biography. Sent from various places around the world some have a full message, some only a few words, which Susannah uses to paint a picture of what Angela was like, a ‘great curser’, capable of the sharpest of remarks, clever, unpredictable, quirky, and funny.

My fourth link is to a book written by another author called Susannah, The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective by Susannah Stepleton, subtitled ‘Secrets and Lies in the Golden Age of Crime‘. This is narrative non-fiction. Was Maud West really who she said she was? Susannah Stapleton discovered that she really did exist and was indeed a private investigator with her own detective agency, based in London in the early part of the twentieth century, from 1905 onwards.

My fifth link is to crime fiction featuring a private investigator, The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, first published in 1939. Private Investigator Philip Marlow is hired by the paralysed millionaire General Stallwood, to deal with the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, and Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.

And my final link is Maisie Dobbs, a book featuring yet another private investigator. This is the first in Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs series. In 1929 Maisie set herself up as a private investigator, having started as a maid to the London aristocracy, studied her way to Cambridge and served as a nurse in the Great War. I’ve read a few more of the series since I read this one.

My chain forms a circle beginning and ending with crime fiction. The other links are books with the word ‘card’ in the titles, books with authors named Susannah and books featuring private investigators. The first five books, like the beginning book, were all published in the 1930s.

Next month (2 March 2024), we will start with Tom Lake by Ann Patchett.