Six Degrees of Separation from Land to The Burry Man’s Day

Published on by Margaret

This is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. This month we are starting with Land by Maggie O’Farrell, her latest release. I’ve read a sample and it looks like a book I’d enjoy.

On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.

The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping, and get them both home?

My first link is the first book by Maggie O’Farrell that I read – The Hand that First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell. I read it in March 2013 and loved it, but it’s such a sad story. It’s beautifully written, so much so that it took me a while to realise that for the most part it’s written in the present tense.

My second link is Mrs McGinty’s Dead by Agatha Christie which I also read in March 2013. Hercule Poirot, assisted by Mrs Ariadne Oliver solve the mystery. There are plenty of surprises and a lot of misdirection before the killer is revealed. It was first published in 1952 and written not long after the end of the Second World War, reflecting the difficulties of finding employment and the changes for the post-war impoverished middle classes.

My third link is another book with the word ‘Mrs’ in the title Mrs Harris goes to Moscow by Paul Gallico. It’s a lovely little book. Mrs Harris is a London char lady who wins a trip to Moscow, where she wants to find her employer’s long-lost love. Mayhem ensues when she is thought to be Lady Char (the Russians not understanding what a ‘char lady’ is had converted it to ‘Lady Char’) and also a spy.

The setting of Moscow is also my link fourth in my chain in Private Moscow by James Patterson and Adam Hamdy, a conspiracy thriller novel. Jack Morgan, the head of Private, a detective agency with branches across the globe, sets out to hunt for the killer of his best friend and former marine, Karl Parker. There are spectacular car chases, with violent shoot-outs, miraculous escapes and fight scenes, and intense danger throughout as intrigues, conspiracies, old secrets and deep-cover agents are revealed.

My fifth link is Let it Bleed by Ian Rankin, which also features a dramatic car chase. Set in Edinburgh, this chase ends in a crash on the Forth Road Bridge. Rebus and his boss Chief Inspector Lauderdale are both injured, whilst the youths they were chasing stumble from their car and plunge from the Bridge embedding themselves in the metal deck of a Royal Navy frigate in the Firth of Forth hundreds of feet below.

My final link is The Burry Man’s Day by Catriona McPherson which is also set on the south shore of the Firth of Forth, part of the city of Edinburgh in South Queensferry. It’s the second in Catriona McPherson’s Dandy Gilver series. Dandy is a wealthy aristocrat who is also an amateur sleuth. In this book she investigates the death of the Burry Man. He is a local man dressed in a suit covered in sticky burdock burr seedheads who walks round Queensferry during the annual Ferry Fair. Dandy is there to present the prizes when he drops down dead.

The links in my chain are words in the titles, books I read in March 2013, books featuring car chases, and books set in Edinburgh.

Next month (September 6, 2026), we’ll start with start either with your book group’s current selection or if you’re not in a book group, start with the book that you’re currently reading.

24 thoughts on “Six Degrees of Separation from Land to The Burry Man’s Day”

  2. Is that the same Mrs Harris who goes to Paris?! The Hand . . . was the first O’Farrell book I read as well and loved it but then somehow stopped, Land sounds good though, I must get back to her – great chain!

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  3. Such a great set of links, Margaret! And I like the way you’ve used very clever ways to link these books together. It’s funny, Mrs. McGinty’s Dead was the first Agatha Christie novel I read, so very good memories there…

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    1. Thanks, Margot. I’d several of Christie’s books before I got to Mrs McGinty’s Death. I think Agatha Christie enjoyed herself writing it, especially the character of the crime novelist, Ariadne Oliver. I’m glad my post brought back happy memories for you.

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  11. I especially enjoy chains where I have read several of the books!

    I’ve been thinking about Mrs. McGinty because I went to a wedding last week where an O’Brien was changing her name to McGinty – it took me a while to remember why the name seemed familiar.

    I haven’t read Land yet either but I plan to. And I liked the Mrs Harris movie but haven’t read the book(s).

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