Six Degrees of Separation: From Knife to Valley of the Kings

  

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 Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie. I haven't read this book; I don't read many memoirs. And when I first read about Knife, I did not think I wanted to read it. But having since read many reviews that have praised the book, I do plan to read it. 

My first link is to another memoir. In 1946, Agatha Christie published Come, Tell Me How You Live, a memoir of the time she spent with her second husband, Max Mallowan, at archaeological digs in Syria. I have not read that memoir yet either, but it is on my shelves to read.

Next is a mystery novel by Agatha Christie, Murder In Mesopotamia (1936), set at an archaeological dig in Iraq. This novel is part of the Hercule Poirot series. One of the members of the expedition is murdered. Poirot happens to be passing through the area and is called on to look into the death. The story is narrated by Nurse Leatheran, and that is what I liked best about the book. 

The books in the Gideon Oliver series by Aaron Elkins series feature a forensic anthropologist who often works at archaeological digs. In Curses, Oliver is invited to an archaeological dig on the Yucatan Peninsula. Both my son and I have read a few books in this series. The first book in this series was published in 1982. 

My next link is to a novel in a historical mystery series that I read years ago, the Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters. Amelia begins her adventures in archaeology in Crocodile on the Sandbank, which is set in 1884 in Egypt.  

The fifth link of my chain, also set in Egypt, is a nonfiction book, The Tomb of Tutankhamen. The author, Howard Carter, was the leader of the excavation and this is his firsthand account of the discovery of the tomb and the artifacts discovered. This book is from my husband's bookshelves and he has several other books on this subject. We visited the Tutankhamen exhibit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1978. 

Staying with Egypt and archaeology sites, the last book in my chain is another of my husbands books, also nonfiction, Valley of the Kings by John Romer. The Valley of the Kings is an area in Egypt where tombs were constructed for pharaohs and nobles for nearly 500 years. Per the Preface of this book, it is a nonfiction account of "two interlinked stories: the first is the history of the travellers and scholars who studied and excavated the royal tombs of the valley; the second is that of the tombs themselves and the motives and methods of the people who made them."

My Six Degrees focused on archaeological sites in fiction and nonfiction. If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you?

The next Six Degrees will be on May 3, 2025 and the starting book will be a book longlisted for the 2025 Stella Prize, Rapture by Emily Maguire.

Short Story Wednesday: More from Mistletoe Mysteries

 

I purchased this book in 2014 after reading a post at GeorgeKelley.org. I read a few stories at that time, then just two years ago I featured the book on my blog, having read 6 more stories in the book. 

Today I feature three more stories from this book. I still haven't read all the stories in this book, but I hope to finish the last three by the end of 2022.

"Dutch Uncle" by Aaron Elkins

Per Charlotte MacLeod's introduction, this was the first short story Aaron Elkins wrote. At the time he had published a few mystery novels, but no short stories. [He has now published 18 novels in the Gideon Oliver series, two other shorter series, and four standalone novels.]

This story is about a lawyer who is hired by a client to help him purchase a piece of art for his wife's Christmas present -- at the last minute. It takes place on Christmas Eve in the late afternoon and that is the last thing he wants to be doing on Christmas Eve.  On top of that the client is extremely obnoxious. The two men find only one art gallery open at that time. With great difficulty they decide upon a painting to purchase, and return home on the ferry. There are two or three (maybe even four) twists before the end of the story and I liked them all.

"The Man Who Loved Christmas" by Henry Slesar

A police office in a small suburb of Dayton is called into work on Christmas morning. He is unhappy about this because his wife is very pregnant with their first child and could have the baby at any time. The case is the disappearance of a man whose wife reported him missing; he wasn't in bed when she woke up and she could not locate him anywhere. The missing man has two children and Christmas is very important to him, so the wife insists he has not just abandoned his family. 

This is another story with unexpected twists, but the results are more serious in this one.

"The Touch of Kolyada" by Edward D. Hoch

This is a Simon Ark story by Hoch, written especially for this anthology. Simon Ark is a mysterious man who claims to be 2000 years old, a Coptic priest hunting down evil. His tales are told by a friend who has known him for many years. His friend doesn't really believe his claims but he does notice that he hasn't aged in the time he has known him. I haven't read any Simon Ark stories yet but I do have a fairly recent collection of those stories from Crippen & Landru on my shelves. 

In this story, Simon Ark encounters a figure from Russian folklore, the elf maiden Kolyada, who distributes gifts to children at Christmas, similar to Santa Claus in western countries. It is an entertaining story, not very complex, and I like the way the narrator tells the story.

Ten Years of Blogging

On February 25th, 2012, I wrote my first blog post. My goals for blogging were to keep track of what I was reading, review the books I read, and take part in reading challenges. At the time I never imagined all the additional benefits that would  come from blogging.

What do I like best about blogging?

• The community of book bloggers. It is wonderful to be able to learn from others who share my love for books and reading. 
• The process of writing down and organizing my thoughts about the books I read. 
• Reminders of authors I need to check out or get reacquainted with.
• Discovering new authors. I thought I knew a lot about older mystery novels (pre-1960's) before I started blogging, but there are always more authors to learn about. Plus the fact that more vintage mysteries and authors are being reprinted now than ever before, so they are more available than ever.

What is new in my blogging?

When I started blogging, I read mystery novels almost exclusively. I still love mysteries, and I give a high priority to vintage mysteries, but I now read a good number of books from other genres. More science fiction and fantasy (heavier on the science fiction). More contemporary general fiction and historical novels.

I joined the Classics Club in late 2018, and have been working on reading books from my Classics List. I am not reading in that area as much I had hoped, but I keep working at it. 

Another new joy in my blogging life is reading more short stories and sharing my thoughts about those on the blog. 

In closing I will feature a few books. All of these books have skulls or skeletons on the cover:

Ray Bradbury's One More for the Road is a book of short stories. Frankly, I bought this book for the cover (over 15 years ago). The stories in this book  are mostly from his later years, based on reviews I read. I will be checking them out later in the year.

Aaron Elkin's Skeleton Dance is the 10th book in the Gideon Oliver (forensic anthropologist) series. I have only read the first two book's in this series, although I have read several of Elkin's standalone novels and loved them. I have copies of many books in the series, mostly because I just love the skeletons on the covers.

The third book, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L. Howard, is my husband's book, but I have always loved the cover illustration. I am thinking I may try reading this one, although it is far outside of my usual reading. It has a carnival setting, which could be fun.

Bookshelf Traveling for Insane Times #21

I am participating in the Bookshelf Traveling For Insane Times meme. It was originated by Judith at Reader in the Wilderness, but Katrina at Pining for the West is now gathering the blogposts.

So here I am looking at a small portion of a shelf in the glass front bookcase. The vintage mysteries on their side are usually hidden by the wooden frames of the two doors. 

If you have problems reading any of the titles, you can try right clicking on the image of the shelf, and open the link in a new tab.

The book on the right side, King & Joker, I have read and reviewed on the blog. It is one of my most favorite books, and also has a great skull on the cover.

The book on the left side, Icy Clutches by Aaron Elkins, is the 6th book in the Gideon Oliver series. Elkins has written several series and some standalone novels, but he is best known for this series. Gideon Oliver is a forensic anthropologist, known as the 'skeleton detective'. The fourth Oliver book, Old Bones, received the 1988 Edgar Award for Best Novel. I have only read two books in this series but I have many more of them because I collect books with skeletons or skulls on the cover. So I will continue with the series, sooner or later. Each book is set in a different and often exotic locale (Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, France; Egypt; Tahiti). 

In case the titles on the stack in the middle are not clear, here is a close up photo. I have not read any of the vintage mysteries in that stack. I have read one book by Richard Hull, The Murder of My Aunt. I really liked that one.

All of the cover illustrations for the British Library Classic Crime series are lovely, but below are two of my favorites.

See reviews of Murder in Piccadilly by Anthony Wynne at Pining for the West and Mysteries Ahoy! Per Aidan at Mysteries Ahoy! this is an inverted mystery, and that appeals to me.

The pluses for Murder of a Lady by Charles Kingston are (1) set in a castle and (2) set in Scotland. However, it is a locked room mystery and I am not very fond of those. See this review at The Invisible Event, which has links to several other reviews.

 

Reading Summary March 2019

I read thirteen books this month, including three graphic novels, one science fiction novel, one non-fiction book, and eight crime fiction novels.

Science Fiction

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) by Douglas Adams

Most people will have heard of this book and its author, even if they haven't read the book. Arthur Dent is protesting the demolition of his house to make way for a bypass. Coincidentally, Arthur's friend, Ford Prefect, is an alien who has learned that the earth is about to be destroyed to make way for a galactic freeway. They are picked up by a giant spaceship from a different galaxy and their adventures begin. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy started out as a radio series,  broadcast by the BBC, and later became a novel. It has also been adapted as a TV series and a 2005 movie starring Martin Freeman. The book was a fun read. It is clearly science fiction, but not serious at all.

 Nonfiction

The Minimalist Home: A Room-By-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life (2018) by Joshua Becker

This is similar to the KonMari Method, but the two systems take different approaches. Marie Kondo suggests a different order to eliminating things, going by types of objects and emphasizes doing it all at once. Joshua Becker goes from room to room, and expects the process to take a while. Both are motivational if you want to make some progress in this area, but I can probably accept Becker's approach more easily. The major flaw in this book is repetition, but I see this in most self-help literature.

Understanding Comics (1994) by Scott McCloud

This is a comic about comics. I have read comics all my life, but I do have problems comprehending some contemporary graphic novels and I thought this might help. I did find some of it very useful for me, all of it informative and enlightening, and McCloud's enthusiasm for the subject makes it very interesting.

Graphic novels

The Umbrella Academy: The Apocalypse Suite  (2008) and
The Umbrella Academy: Dallas (2009)
by Gerard Way (Writer),  Gabrielle Bá (Artist)

I bought these two graphic novels before I heard about the adaptation of The Umbrella Academy on Netflix. The story is about a dysfunctional family of adopted children, all born at the same time (in different locations all over the world) to mothers who showed no signs of pregnancy.  The adoptive father, Reginald Hargreeves, takes the children to the Umbrella Academy and trains them to be superheroes. 

Crime Fiction

The Tears of Autumn (1974) by Charles McCarry

This is a spy fiction novel by Charles McCarry, the second book in the Paul Christopher series. McCarry is one of my favorite authors and I have read most of his books. 

See review here.

Extraordinary People (2006) by Peter May

The Enzo Macleod Investigation series, Book #1. I have read several books by Peter May, and I learn a lot from each of his books. He often includes information about the setting and its history in the stories, and that is true in this case. Macleod, half-Scottish and half-Italian, is a forensics expert and a university professor in Toulouse, France. In this book, Macleod spends a good bit of time looking for clues in the catacombs under Paris.

Turncoat (2002) by Aaron Elkins

It is very difficult to describe this book in one sentence, so I will just send you to my review if you want to know more. The story, the premise, and the writing grabbed me immediately. The story begins in November 1963 in New York but soon moves to France, where the narrator, a professor of history, is trying to locate his wife, who has disappeared. 

Remembered Death (1944) by Agatha Christie

This non-series book by Agatha Christie was published in the UK as Sparkling Cyanide. Beautiful Rosemary Barton dies from drinking cyanide-laced champagne at her own birthday party while celebrating at a nightclub in London and the police assume that her death was suicide. My review here.

Smoke Detector  (1984) by Eric Wright

Smoke Detector is the 2nd Charlie Salter mystery, set in Toronto, Ontario. Salter is a member of the Metropolitan Police. In this story, he is assigned to an arson / homicide case. My review here.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)
by Douglas Adams

This book is almost as hard to describe as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It is a bit less weird, it is set in the UK, and many strange things do happen. It is a mish-mash of science fiction and fantasy and a detective story. I enjoyed it but it took a while before I had any sense of where it was going.

The Silkworm (2014) by Robert Galbraith (AKA J.K. Rowling)

The second book in the  Cormoran Strike series. Strike is an ex-Army private detective, and his young secretary Robin wants to learn to be an investigator also. This book focuses on the publishing industry. A woman asks Strike's help in finding her husband, an author who has been missing for several days. There is a lot to like about this series and the main characters.

What Never Happens (2014) by Anne Holt

This is the second book in the Adam Stubo and Johanne Vik series. The setting is Oslo, Norway. My main attraction to this series is the two main characters. Adam is an inspector in the Criminal Investigation Service and Johanne has worked with the FBI as a profiler. See my review here.

Turncoat: Aaron Elkins

I have a shelf of books that I call the "three year" shelf. A book can sit on the shelf for three years and if I don't read it before then it goes (to the donation stack). I figure that for most of the books, I can give them the 50 page test before deciding to continue reading them or giving up on them. And in a few cases it has only taken a page or three to realize that I can pass the book on to someone else. This has been moderately successful.

Turncoat by Aaron Elkins was on this shelf, but as soon as I read a couple of pages from the book, I knew I was going to keep reading.  The story, the premise, and the writing grabbed me immediately. It is set in November 1963 and begins on the day John F. Kennedy died.

The book begins with this sentence:

"For everybody else in America it was the day JFK was killed in Dallas. For me it would always be the day Lily's father turned up on our doorstep."

The narrator is Peter Simon, currently a professor of history at Brooklyn college, formerly a waist gunner in a B-17 towards the end of World War II. Lily is his wife of 17 years, a counselor in a local high school. The unusual thing about his father-in-law turning up on his doorstep is that Peter had always thought that he had died during the war. Thus, Lily's father's sudden appearance and her refusal to talk to her father confuses him. Days later her father is dead, his savagely beaten body found in southern Brooklyn.

Both Peter and Lily have roots in France. Peter was born there but moved to the US at a young age with his parents. Lily lived in France until 1945, when she was 17 and met Peter in London towards the end of the war. They married and moved to the US. So when Lily disappears after the discovery of her father's body, Peter starts the search for her in Europe, first in Spain where her father had been living, then moving on to France and the town where Lily grew up.

For me the joy of reading this book was taking Peter's journey of discovery with him, thus I don't want to reveal more of the plot. I will say that the focus is on the French who collaborated with the Germans in World War II and the lasting effects that the German occupation had in France after the war.

This is a suspenseful story, cleverly told, and a page turner. New pieces of information about Lily and her father and their past are gradually revealed, in a realistic way. Peter Simon is resourceful and determined, although he finds it difficult to move outside of his comfort zone while hunting down the truth and his wife.

The story is very believable, partly because Peter knows enough French to get along well in France. We get to know him very well, and there are some great secondary characters. Two policemen are favorites of mine, one in New York (Detective Sergeant Ivan Kovalski of the 61st Precinct), one in Veaudry, France (Alphonse Juneaux of the Police Nationale's Provincial Department of Criminal Investigation).

In 2014 I read Loot (my review here), another book by Aaron Elkins about events related to World War II and its aftermath. That one is on a different subject, the looting of art treasures during the war. Elkins is better known for his series about Gideon Oliver, a forensic anthropologist whose nickname is "The Skeleton Detective".

 -----------------------------

Publisher:  William Morrow, 2002.
Length:     298 pages
Format:     Hardcover
Setting:     New York, Spain, France
Genre:      Historical mystery
Source:     I purchased my copy.

Loot: Aaron Elkins

Extract from summary at Goodreads:

April 1945: In the last convulsive days of World War II a convoy of Nazi trucks loaded with Europe's greatest art treasures winds its way through the Alps toward a cavernous Austrian salt mine. With the Allies closing in and chaos erupting, a single truck silently disappears into a mountain snowstorm with its cargo of stolen masterpieces.

Fifty years later, in a seedy Boston pawnshop, one of the truck's paintings surfaces at last, pawned for $100 by a smalltime Russian thug. The next day, the shop owner, Simeon Pawlovsky, himself a Nazi death camp survivor, is dead, the life brutally beaten out of him. The painting is gone.

Once he examined the painting, Simeon suspected that it was a masterpiece, and called in art historian Benjamin Revere for advice on how to proceed. After Simeon's death, Ben ends up on an international hunt for the rightful owner of the painting and along the way runs into the Russian mafia. He is just a regular guy who knows a lot about art and especially the plundering of art during World War II. He isn't a hero but he doesn't give up easily, and he has a conscience. He feels responsible for Simeon's death, and feels he must do what he can to find out who murdered him.

I am currently reading Monuments Men by Robert M. Edsel.  (And previously had watched the movie by the same name and the documentary The Rape of Europa.) So this topic is very much in my mind right now. I have had this book for about eight years and this was the perfect time for me to finally read it.

It is a shame I waited this long to read the book because it was highly entertaining. The characterization is great; Ben is sharply drawn, and this is also true of many of the lesser characters. There is a romantic interest, and that is well done. The story is told in an entertaining way with just the right amount of humor. The eventual resolution is not obvious at all.

In the acknowledgments, Aaron Elkins thanks Lane Faison, "a young lieutenant in the three-man OSS Art Looting Investigation Team" for answering questions about the German looting of art objects. Although Faison does not feature heavily in Monuments Men, the author of that book tells a moving story about inteviewing Faison at the age of 98 in the Author's Note.

Yvette, at In So Many Words, is a big fan of Aaron Elkins, and especially this book. She goes into a lot of detail about the book and its background here.

Aaron Elkins has written other series, and I have read a few of the ones about forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver. The current covers of the books for this series all feature skeletons, so I have copies of almost all of the books, and will read more eventually. My son has read more of those books than I have, and enjoyed them a lot.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Avon, 1999.
Length:       376 pages
Format:       paperback
Setting:       Boston, Massachusetts; St. Petersburg, Russia; Budapest, Hungary
Genre:         Mystery, art history

Mysteries My Son Reads Part 1

A few years ago my son and I decided to sample books from each other's favorite genres. He would suggest books in the fantasy and science fiction genres for me to try. I would suggest mystery series I thought he might like.

Unfortunately, the experiment was more successful at his end. I guess he is the more flexible, open-minded reader of the two of us. (Of course, there is the fact that he reads much faster than I do.)

Regardless, he has since sampled several mystery series that I suggested. A few of the authors he has read and liked are:

Jane Haddam (Gregor Demarkian series)

The Gregor Demarkian series is about an ex-FBI profiler (retired) who is often pulled back into detection (as a consultant). Set in an Armenian-American neighborhood in Philadelphia. The first books in the series all were set around holidays; by about book 11 that theme was left behind. Some of the later novels center around social issues, sometimes overshadowing the actual mystery.

There are currently 27 books in the series; I have read the first 24 books. I read the first 20 books in three months in 2005. I liked the novels because they have interesting continuing characters and are centered around interesting issues. I usually find that she presents the issues from both sides, although it may be clear which side she favors.

Christopher Fowler (Bryant and May series)

The Bryant and May mysteries star two elderly detectives, Arthur Bryant and John May, members of the fictional Peculiar Crimes Unit. The series is set primarily in London, and the novels often feature flashbacks to cases from the two detective's past. Before the Bryant & May mystery series began, the detectives were featured in three of Fowler's books in the horror genre: Rune, Darkest Day, and Soho Black. I have not had the nerve to try those yet.

This series is more popular with my son than with me. He has read the first eight books; there are now ten books in the series, although the last has not been published in the US yet. I have only read the first three. I have not found them as compelling as other mysteries I have read.

Donna Andrews (Meg Langslow series)

Per the Donna Andrews page on Wikipedia: "Her first book, Murder with Peacocks (1999), introduced Meg Langslow, a blacksmith from Yorktown, Virginia. It won the St. Martin's Minotaur Best First Traditional Mystery contest, the Agatha, Anthony, Barry, and Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice awards for best first novel, and the Lefty award for funniest mystery of 1999." The series has continued for fourteen more books (one yet to be published).

This is a series that only my son has read. I initially bought a few of the books, never got around to reading them, and suggested he try them. I thought that they would be too, too cozy. He has enjoyed them and he says I should give them a try.

Aaron Elkins (Gideon Oliver series)

Aaron Elkins (born 1935) is best known for his series of novels featuring forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver—the 'skeleton detective'. The fourth Oliver book, Old Bones, received the 1988 Edgar Award for Best Novel. My son and I have each read only a few novels in this series. Each book is set in a different and often exotic locale (Les Eyzies-de-Tayac, France; Egypt; Tahiti). I have many books in this series because I collect books with skeletons or skulls on the cover. So I will continue with the series, sooner or later.

Elkins also has written a series about a museum curator Chris Norgren, an expert in Northern Renaissance art. A stand alone novel, Loot, is about art stolen by the Nazis. With his wife, Charlotte Elkins, he has also co-written a series of golf mysteries.

My son has read (parts of) several other mystery series. He has sampled a few authors of vintage mysteries but so far read only one from each author. I plan to follow up with more on those authors in another post. And also post about the science fiction and fantasy books that I tried.

As far as my plans for 2013:

1. I am committed to reading at least 3 science fiction books and 3 fantasy novels. Quite possibly more.
2. Now that I have profiled these authors (although briefly), I hope to read at least one book by each of these authors in the next year.