Category: Crime Fiction

I love doing 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 the chain begins with a book I haven’t read Where the Wild Things Are by Maurie Sendak. This is the summary from Amazon:

One night Max puts on his wolf suit and makes mischief of one kind and another, so his mother calls him ‘Wild Thing’ and sends him to bed without his supper. That night a forest begins to grow in Max’s room and an ocean rushes by with a boat to take Max to the place where the wild things are. Max tames the wild things and crowns himself as their king, and then the wild rumpus begins! But when Max has sent the monsters to bed, and everything is quiet, he starts to feel lonely and realises it is time to sail home to the place where someone loves him best of all.

Apart from the opening book I have read all the books in my chain and they are all crime fiction (the links on titles are to my posts on the books).

My first link is the word in the title, wild:

Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin – Rebus has retired but is asked to act in a ‘consultative capacity’ albeit not as a cop and with no warrant card or real powers and with no pay. It’s a complicated crime fiction novel and Rebus and retired gangster, Big Ger work together, although never fully confiding in each other.

My second link is also a word in the title – dog:

Dog Will Have His Day by Fred Vargas, the second in her Three Evangelists series. It’s a strange murder mystery, full of bizarre events and characters  in which two of the three ‘Evangelists’, Marc and Mathias help uncover the mystery surrounding a tiny fragment of human bone found in a pile of dog excrement on a grid around a tree.

My third link is to another animal that features in a crime fiction mystery – a cat:

The Cat Who Could Read Backwards by Lilian Jackson Braun features Koko, a beautiful Siamese cat – who can’t actually read! Earl Lambreth, who runs an art gallery is found murdered and Joe Qwilleran, a newspaper reporter, with help from Koko, uncovers the identity of the killer.

There is also an art gallery in The Wych Elm by Tana French. Toby Hennessy, the narrator is a good looking and charming young man who works for an art gallery in the centre of Dublin. A human skull is found in the hollow trunk of a wych elm in his uncle’s garden.

And there is a human skull in Death at the President’s Lodging by Michael Innes – the President of the college has been murdered, his head swathed in a black academic gown, a human skull beside his body and surrounding it, little pile.

Finally, Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers is also set in a college, Shrewsbury College at Oxford University. Harriet Vane attends the Shrewsbury Gaudy (a college reunion involving a celebratory dinner), not sure she can face meeting her fellow students and the dons. It doesn’t go well – there are poison pen letters, nasty graffiti and vandalism causing mayhem and upset.

Next month (August 3, 2019) is a wild card – start with the book you’ve ended your July chain with (for those playing for the first time, start with the last book you finished reading).