Six Degrees of Separation: From Dangerous Liaisons to Before the Coffee Gets Cold

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting book this month is Dangerous Liaisons. This is a French epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, published in 1782, with the original title of Les Liaisons dangereuses. It tells the story of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, two lovers who plot to seduce and manipulate others. I don't know much about this book except that it was adapted to film many times; the one I am most familiar with is Dangerous Liaisons (1988), directed by Stephen Frears and starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich. Two other English language versions are Valmont (1989), directed by Miloš Forman, and Cruel Intentions (1999), which relocates the story to modern-day New York.

1st degree:

My first link is to another French novel adapted to the screen, titled D’entre les morts (1954), written by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. Hitchcock adapted the story as Vertigo, set in San Francisco instead of France.  The first translation of the  book to English was published in 1956 as The Living and the Dead. Pushkin Vertigo more recently issued a reprint of the novel with the title Vertigo.

2nd degree:

For my next link, I picked another book adapted to film by Hitchcock, The Rainbird Pattern (1972) by Victor Canning. It is the 2nd book in a loose spy fiction series called the Birdcage books. The film version was titled Family Plot, and is very different from the book. The basic elements of the plot remain, but the story is turned into a comedy.

3rd degree:

My husband and I have watched a lot of Hitchcock movies, and another novel that he chose to adapt was Rebecca (1938) by Daphne du Maurier. The adaptation, released in 1940, stars Laurence Olivier as the widower Maxim de Winter and Joan Fontaine as the unnamed woman who becomes his second wife.

4th degree:

Moving away from Hitchcock and adaptations, my next book is another by Daphne du Maurier, The House on the Strand (1969). I was surprised to find out that this book is a time travel story; my son found it for me in the science fiction and fantasy section of the book sale in 2023. I haven't read it yet so check out reviews at Constance's Staircase Wit blog and Kelly's Thoughts & Ramblings.

5th degree:

And now I move to another classic book of time travel, this time with a scientific basis: The End of Eternity (1955) by Isaac Asimov. This book is about a group of people called the Eternals, who live outside of time and either observe time at different points or make Reality Changes to make positive changes for the future. I read this over ten years ago but I remember I liked it a lot. Even though the book has very few women characters, there is definitely a romance of sorts, and it reads like a thriller.

6th degree:

There are many  different takes on time travel stories. Some are science fiction, using machines of some type to take the person back in time. Others lean more towards fantasy. In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, visitors to a tiny café in Tokyo can take advantage of a special service; they can travel back in time if they drink a cup of the special coffee made by this café. This is the first book in a series about the café and its unique brand of time travel.

My Six Degrees took me from France to England and then to the past via time travel. Have you read any of these books? If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you?

The next Six Degrees will be on  March 1, 2025 and the starting book will be the 2023 Booker Prize winner, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch.

Six Degrees of Separation: from The Arsonist to The Indigo Necklace

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six other books, forming a chain. Every month she provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting point this month is The Arsonist by Chloe Hooper, a non-fiction book about the man who started two fires that let to a bushfire catastrophe in Australia. The book sounds very disturbing, but it is of interest to me because of the devastating wildfires we have had in California in the last year or two.



My first link is to a fiction story about arson on a smaller level, in The Dark Snow and Other Mysteries by Brendan DuBois. One short story in this book is "Fire Burning Bright", about a small town plagued by an arsonist, this time burning down houses, which causes the people in the area to become suspicious and distrustful of their neighbors.

 This leads me to another anthology of short stories, Alfred Hitchcock's Happiness is a Warm Corpse. I collect books with skulls or skeletons on the cover, and this is a great example.

Thinking about Hitchcock leads me one of my favorite films directed and produced by Hitchcock, Vertigo. That film was based on a book written by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, titled D’entre les morts (1954). The film was set in San Francisco, but the book was set in France and originally written in French.

Another novel I read that was translated from French was Seeking Whom He May Devour by Fred Vargas. This book in the Commissaire Adamsberg series is set in the French Alps. Adamsberg is based in Paris, but in the first two-thirds of this book, the story centers on a group of people residing in the French Alps who are on a quest to stop a murderer.

For the next link, I move on to the Swiss Alps... to Season of Snows and Sins (1971) by Patricia Moyes, one of my favorite authors of mysteries. The story has several narrators, starting with Jane Weston, a sculptor who has moved to a small chalet in the Swiss Alps. She invites Scotland Yard Inspector Henry Tibbett and his wife Emmy to visit at Christmas, since she knows how they love to ski. And then, of course, there is a murder.

My final book in the chain, The Indigo Necklace (1945) by Frances Crane, also features a husband and wife detecting duo. The books in the series  were set in a variety of locations. In this one, Pat and Jean Abbott are living in a rented apartment in an old house in the French Quarter of New Orleans, where Pat is stationed toward the end of World War II.

Next month (April 6, 2019), Six Degrees of Separation will begin with Ali Smith’s award-winning novel, How to be Both.

Vertigo: Boileau-Narcejac

This book was originally published in France in 1954 as D'entre les morts; in 1956 it was translated to English and published as The Living and the Dead. It was the basis for Hitchcock's film, Vertigo. There are significant differences between the book and the film but the basic story is the same.

The book opens with Paul Gévigne asking Roger Flavières to watch over his wife and protect her from herself. Gévigne's wife, Madeleine, is acting strangely and he is afraid she will disappear or hurt herself. Gévigne, a wealthy shipbuilder, and Flavières, a lawyer, were once in school together, which explains why Gévigne makes this strange request and why Flavières gives in against his better judgment.

Flavières does start following Madeleine, watching her behavior. Eventually he sees her try to commit suicide by jumping into a river. He saves her and then becomes obsessed with her, continuing to see her and developing a relationship.

All of this takes place in France shortly before the German occupation of France during World War II. The book is a story of obsession and deceit. The plot has many twists and turns after this point and I don't want to reveal any more. If you have seen the movie you can guess some of the plot points... but not all. And if you haven't I don't want to spoil either the book or the movie.

I am very glad I decided to read this book. It was unusual to read a book after I have watched a movie so many times. But having already seen the movie did not spoil the experience because  of the variations in the setting and the mood. A book almost always provides more depth into what is going on with the characters than a film. However, Hitchcock changed the characters and their involvement with each other to present the movie he wanted, so that the movie and book seem very different even though they tell the same basic story. Both are very very good.

Hitchcock's film based on this book is set in San Francisco and he uses that setting with great effect. San Francisco was chosen for the setting early in the screen writing process. The development of the screenplay and the decision on locations to film are discussed at the Alfred Hitchcock Wiki.

The San Francisco locations for scenes in this film are featured in Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco by Jeff Kraft and Aaron Leventhal. There are over 90 pages devoted to this film, including many historical and contemporary photos. It is a treasure trove of information for those who love this film and the city of San Francisco.

Per the back of my paperback edition, "Boileau-Narcejac is the nom-de-plume of Pierre Boileau (1906-89) and Thomas Narcejac (1908-98), one of France's most successful writing duos." Pushkin Vertigo has published another title by these authors: She Who Was No More.

Other reviews at:

Col's Criminal Library
the crime segments
His Futile Preoccupations
Tipping My Fedora
A Crime is Afoot
JacquiWine's Journal
Vintage Pop Fictions
Fiction Fan

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Publisher:   Pushkin Vertigo, 2015 (orig. pub. 1954)
Length:      189 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Translated by:  Geoffrey Sainsbury
Setting:      France, World War II
Genre:       Mystery
Source:     I purchased this book.