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 All Fours by Miranda July. Although the book has been very successful, I know very little about it, so I am linking to my first book using the author's first name.
1st degree:
Linking from the author's name, Miranda July, my first book in the chain is City of Secrets (2011) by Kelli Stanley; the main character in this book is Miranda Corbie. I think Miranda is a lovely name. I haven't read this book but my husband has, and here is his brief review from Goodreads:
This excellent private eye thriller - the second of the Miranda Corbie series - weaves a genuinely sinister plot line into an evocative 1940 San Francisco setting. A strong protagonist (who drinks and smokes lots!), well drawn supporting characters, and style to burn.
2nd degree:
Using Kelli Stanley's last name, I link to a book from the Stanley Hastings series, Favor (1988) by Parnell Hall. My husband and I both read this book, but his review (at Goodreads) is much better than mine:
Stanley Hastings is a lowly-paid leg man for an ambulance chasing lawyer, a wannabe sort of private eye and writer, a self-deprecating and loving family man. In this, the third of Parnell Hall's series, we find Stanley off to Atlantic City to do a quick favor for someone who's not really even a friend. Before too long, he finds himself charged with grand larceny (the way he tries to get out of that is elegant) and in the frame for two murders. The characters are all sharply drawn, the pace is swift, the plot is complex in a good way, and there is a light tone throughout. There are nearly 20 in the series and I can't wait to get to the next one.
3rd degree:
Parnell Hall was a prolific author with multiple series. For my next link I choose a book by another author with the last name of Hall. Adam Hall was a pseudonym used by Ellestor Trevor, and under that name he wrote a long-running series of spy novels featuring Quiller, a British secret agent for a covert organization of spies, unacknowledged by the government. Quiller is a very unusual spy fiction protagonist in that he doesn't smoke, drink, or carry a gun. The Quiller Memorandum (1965) is set in the 1960s in Berlin, and Quiller has finished a long string of assignments to find Nazi war criminals and bring them to trial. He is planning to return to England the next day, but is enticed into a new assignment when another agent is killed.
4th degree:
Moving from a spy series written in the 1960s to another series written at about the same time, my next link is to Funeral in Berlin (1964) by one of my favorite authors, Len Deighton. In this story, the nameless spy (called Harry Palmer in the movie adaptations) is sent to East Berlin to facilitate the defection of an East German scientist. He must work with the Russian security-chief Colonel Stok and Hallam of the British Home Office. An elaborate plan is set up to get the scientist out of East Berlin. This book was published only three years after the Berlin Wall was constructed; in the introduction, Deighton speaks of the time he spent in East Berlin shortly after the wall went up. The setting feels very authentic.
5th degree:
Funeral in Berlin is about a defector in East Berlin. My next book, Defectors (2017) by Joseph Kanon, is about a group of American and British spies living in and around Moscow during the Cold War, after defecting to the USSR. The focus is on the relationship of the two brothers in the story, Frank, the US spy who defected to Russia in 1949, and Simon, his younger brother, who had to leave his job in intelligence to work in publishing after Frank's defection. In 1961, Simon has been allowed to come to Moscow to work with Frank on publishing his memoirs. I loved the exploration of family relationships, but the story has plenty of action also.
6th degree:
My next book, The Spellman Files (2007) by Lisa Lutz, is also about family relationships. The Spellmans are a strange and dysfunctional family who run a detective agency. Before reading the book, I had the mistaken notion that this book was primarily a humorous and cozy mystery. It is humorous but not so cozy, and sometimes does not even seem like crime fiction. I loved the writing, and I found the book hard to put down.
My Six Degrees starts in the US, moves to Berlin, Germany, then Russia, and back to the US. If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you?
Have you read any of these books?
The next Six Degrees will be on July 5, 2025 and the starting book will be the 2025 Stella Prize winner, Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser.
