Six Degrees of Separation: From Wild Dark Shore to Where'd You Go, Bernadette?

 

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 Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy. This is a brief description at Goodreads: 

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny weather-lashed island that is home to the world's largest seed bank. As Shearwater risks being lost to rising sea levels, the island's researchers have fled, and only the Salts remain. Until, during the worst storm in living memory, a stranger washes ashore.

What this description does not mention is that Shearwater is an island off Antarctica. I haven't read this book yet but I am fairly sure that either my husband or I will get a copy this year. I am a sucker for any novel set in or near Antarctica.

1st degree:

My first link is to another book by Charlotte McConaghy, Migrations. I have a copy of Migrations and plan to read it this year. This dystopian book is about a woman whose goal is to go to Greenland, then follow the Arctic terns on what will possibly be their final migration to Antarctica.

2nd degree:

Next I link to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, using the author's first name, Charlotte. This book, published in 1847, is on my Classics List. I want to read this book soon, definitely in 2026.

3rd degree:

For this link, I am using the last name of the previous author, Brontë. In the last couple of years, I have read good reviews of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, written by Anne Brontë, sister of Charlotte, and published in 1848. Before that, I wasn't interested in the book because of its length. Now I am also interested in this book because it is categorized as an epistolary novel. The author uses letters and diary entries to create the structure of the story.

4th degree:

From here on, my Six Degrees chain will consist of epistolary novels. The fourth book is Dracula by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. For years I avoided reading Dracula, but many people, including my husband, told me that it is a very good read, and they were all right. The story is told through letters and diary entries and I enjoyed that format. It was much more accessible than I expected, although parts of it were challenging to read. This book is on my Classics List but I still haven't reviewed it.

5th degree:

Continuing with the epistolary theme, my next book is The Miernik Dossier, by Charles McCarry,  published in 1973. This was the first novel by McCarry and it is the first book in the Paul Christopher series. When it was published, this book was praised by Eric Ambler ("The most intelligent and enthralling piece of work I have read for a very long time."), among others. It is not my favorite in the series, but it is certainly a unique and entertaining novel.

The story is told entirely through documents, including but not limited to transcripts of conversations and diary entries. With this story-telling device, McCarry tells the story through five different characters. In this novel, Paul Christopher is not as much the focus as in later books.

6th degree:

Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2012) by Maria Semple connects to the previous books because the story is told entirely through a compiled collection of documents—emails, letters, faxes, police reports, and interoffice memos. It also connects back to the first book because the family is planning a trip to Antarctica. 

Bernadette Fox and Elgin Branch have promised their daughter a trip to Antarctica if she makes excellent grades. She succeeds, but unfortunately Bernadette get so mired down in the preparations that everything falls to pieces in their already precarious marriage. This is a real mishmash of a book, and there were many times that I was totally lost. Fortunately, it was worth the effort getting to the end. Bee Branch, their daughter, was my favorite character. 

My Six Degrees took me from Antarctica to England to Transylvania to Switzerland and the Sudan, to the USA, and back to Antarctica. Have you read any of these books? 

If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you?

I rarely have a Six Degrees chain where the last link connects back to the 1st link, this time I did that.

The next Six Degrees will be on  June 6, 2026, and the starting book will be The Post-Office Girl by Austrian author Stefan Sweig.

Books Read in August 2023

I read nine books in August and completed all of the books on my 20 Books of Summer list. I did not review them all, but did better than usual in that area. I read four nonfiction books, although three of them were shorter books. All of the books I read in August were very good.

Graphic Nonfiction 

Number One is Walking: My Life in the Movies and Other Diversions (2022) 

by Steve Martin, Drawings by Harry Bliss

This is a short and entertaining graphic memoir, in which Steve Martin, star of many films and currently starring in the TV series Only Murders in the Building, tells selected stories about his career in the movies. That portion of the book is supplemented by cartoons drawn by Harry Bliss. This book was his second collaboration with Harry Bliss; the first was A Wealth of Pigeons: A Cartoon Collection.

A Fire Story (2019) by Brian Fies

Brian Flies tells the story of his and his wife's escape from the Tubbs fire that engulfed their home in Santa Rosa, and their experiences following the fire, with all their possessions gone. My review here.

Nonfiction / Letters 

84, Charing Cross Road (1970) by Helene Hanff

I loved reading this very brief book of letters between Helene Hanff in New York City and Frank Doel in London, starting in October 1949. My review here.

Nonfiction / History

Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory (2010) 

by Ben Macintyre

This is an extremely well-written history telling the story of Operation Mincemeat, a plan to deceive the Germans related to the next target that the Allies planned to attack. Sicily was the most obvious target, but intelligence agents wanted to convince the enemy that the attack would be on Greece or Sardinia. My review here.

Science Fiction

The Last Colony (2007) by John Scalzi

This book is the third in the Old Man's War series; the first two books are military science fiction, which I did not think I would like, but I did. This entry in the series was an interesting combination of a story about the colonization of a planet and the resulting effort to protect the planet from a group that wants to annihilate it. I rated The Last Colony higher than the other two, but I read the first two books ten years ago. Maybe I am a more generous grader of books now (which I would just as soon not do anyway), or maybe I liked the emphasis on people and relationships in this one.

Crime Fiction

The Mulberry Bush (2015) by Charles McCarry

This is the last novel that Charles McCarry published before his death in 2019. It is a standalone spy story about a man whose main focus is getting revenge for his father, a spy for the CIA whose career ended in disgrace. Now the son has succeeded in getting a job with the CIA and is bent on avenging the wrong that Headquarters did to his father. My review here.

Sleep and His Brother (1971) by Peter Dickinson

This is the fourth in a series about Jimmy Pibble. In the first two books, he was a Scotland Yard detective; now he has been forced into retirement. His wife is a volunteer for a charitable institution and asks him to look into a problem they are having. There are vague supernatural elements, which is not surprising since Dickenson was a well-known author of fantasy books. The book is very short, around 200 pages, but very dense, not an easy read at all. I loved the story and the writing.

The Doomsday Carrier (1976) by Victor Canning

This was another short book, under 200 pages, and the fourth book in a loose series called the Birdcage books. They all revolve around a covert security group in the UK, a branch of the Ministry of Defense. A chimpanzee has escaped from the facility where it had been infected with plague bacillus, with the goal of creating an infectious carrier of the disease after a three week incubation period. The story follows the chimpanzee as it continues to elude capture, and two people who hope to catch it and return it to the facility before it becomes contagious. Concerns are addressed about the ethics of doing this kind of research and the dishonesty of government officials in trying to keep the truth from the public.

A Man's Head (1931) by Georges Simenon

There are 75 novels featuring Inspector Maigret, and each of those that I have read is different. Maigret often behaves strangely, at least for a policeman of his rank. In this case, Maigret arranges the escape of a condemned murderer from prison. The man, Joseph Heurtin, was convicted of having killed a rich American woman and her French maid. Maigret is sure that Huertin could not have done the crime, even though the proof of his guilt is strong. He plans to have the man followed once he escapes, and see if he will lead the police to the real culprit. Maigret gets very personally involved in this one. An alternate title for this book is A Battle of Nerves, which is definitely an accurate description. The Maigret novels are always good reads, brief, and usually with some humor.

Currently reading

For my Classics List, I am reading I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith; I have read about half the book. This book is the starting book for Six Degrees of Separation in October, and is on my Classics List. 

The annual Planned Parenthood Book Sale started on September 15th. We have been to the book sale several times since it started, and will go again on Sunday, the last day of the sale. I have bought way too many books, so maybe I won't find too many more to buy.

The photos at the top of this post are of the Silver-leafed Princess Flower plants in our front flower beds. Last month's photos showed the first purple blooms on the plants. The photos in this post show the plant in full bloom. 

The photo immediately above is a flower on our Butterfly bush. The plant has done very well and gotten taller than we expected.

Photos taken and processed by my husband. Click on the images for the best viewing quality.

The Mulberry Bush: Charles McCarry

Back in 2009, I discovered the spy fiction of Charles McCarry. He wrote a series about Paul Christopher, an intelligence agent for the CIA. I read all of the books in that series, plus a couple of political thrillers that feature other members of the Christopher family.  I was very impressed with McCarry's writing. Those nine books were written between 1971 and 2007. 

More recently McCarry published two standalone books in the spy fiction genre, The Shanghai Factor in 2013 and The Mulberry Bush in 2015. Today I am discussing The Mulberry Bush, which I read in early August.

This story is about a man whose main focus is getting revenge for his father, a spy for the CIA whose career ended in disgrace and led to him becoming homeless. The son succeeds in getting a job with the CIA and fortunately does so well that he is given an important position and assignment at Headquarters. He makes connections and builds relationships with agents in South America and Russia. Via this route he meets Luz, the daughter of a famous Argentinean revolutionary. She also has a hatred for the CIA, and they become allies in a plan to cause the downfall of that agency and its leaders.

Now all of this sounds really over-the-top, unreal and straining disbelief, but it all worked for me. It is a real roller coaster of a story, confusing, but most spy fiction is. A lot of characters, no one you can trust, also true of most spy fiction. 

As usual, I found McCarry's writing to be fantastic. I was immersed in the story and did not want to put the book down. The main character, the spy seeking revenge, is never named and he tells the story. I like stories with first person narration. You only know the story from one point of view, everyone else is a question mark. I was always focused on the main character's goal and wondering what his plan was to achieve it. 

This is not a perfect book. I sometimes complain about books with many unlikeable characters; this book is full of them, and I can name only one or two that I liked. I don't think that spoils a book necessarily. I did not particularly like the main character, but I sympathized with his goal to avenge his father. There were some fascinating characters that he meets along the way,  and maybe that is what saved the book.

Both The Shanghai Factor and The Mulberry Bush focus a lot on sex and relationships that were primarily about sex. I don't remember this being the case in the earlier books. Sex and relationships were there, but just not so prominent. Part of the problem with this is that the depictions of female characters are lacking.  Luz doesn't get enough to do to make any impact and she just seems to be an avenue to achieving the son's revenge.

So, to summarize. This was a book I liked very much; if you like spy fiction, it is highly recommended. However, if you want to try reading Charles McCarry for the first time. I would start with the Paul Christopher series. I don't know if it matters if you read them in order; I did. 

 -----------------------------

Publisher:  Mysterious Press, 2015.
Length:      308 pages
Format:     Hardcover
Setting:     US; South America; Middle East
Genre:      Spy fiction
Source:     I purchased my copy. 

Six Degrees of Separation: from Romantic Comedy to The Beast Must Die

  

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 Curtis Sittenfeld's Romantic Comedy. I have not read that book or any of the books by that author, although I am curious about her writing.

For my first link, I will start with a romance novel ...

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is a romance, but definitely not a comedy. I like romance in a book, but usually not if that is the only focus. This one is also a mystery and a classic.

I like it when a book features a romance but the romance is secondary to the main plot, as in...

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman, the second book in the Thursday Murder Club series. In this book the mystery plot is primary but a secondary plot is DCI Chris Hudson's developing relationship with his PC's mother, Patrice. 

Elizabeth, one of the four main characters in The Man Who Died Twice, was formerly an MI5 agent, and in this book she is helping her ex-husband Douglas, who is still working for MI5. This leads me to my next link, also featuring an MI5 agent...

The Last Defector by Tony Cape features Derek Smailes, an MI5 agent sent to London to work at the UN. The plan is for him to aid in a plot to convince a Soviet (also working at the UN) to defect and provide information on disarmament plans in Russia. 

This leads to another book I read featuring a defector...

Catch a Falling Spy (apa Twinkle, Twinkle Little Spy) is one of seven novels featuring an unnamed British spy. The agent is tasked with evaluating a Russian defector, Professor Bekuv. This novel felt like a world tour. It starts out in the Algerian Sahara Desert and returns to that spot for the denouement.  In between they visit the US, France, and Ireland.

My fifth link also features an unnamed spy, this time working for the CIA ...

The Mulberry Bush by Charles McCarry is about a man whose main focus is getting revenge for his father, a spy for the CIA whose career ended in disgrace. Now the son has succeeded in getting a job with the CIA and is bent on avenging the wrong that Headquarters did to his father. I am currently reading this book and have only about 100 pages left.

I did not realize how many books I have read that have revenge as the prime motivation.

The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake is a classic mystery novel, part of the Nigel Strangeways series. Nicholas Blake was the pseudonym use by Cecil Day-Lewis, who was an Anglo-Irish poet and the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1968 until his death in 1972. In this book, a father seeks revenge for the death of his son, who was killed in a hit-and-run accident. Nigel Strangeways does not show up until midway into the book.

My Six Degrees takes me from a romance set on a fictional late night comedy sketch show set in the US to a classic mystery novel set in Gloucestershire. Along the way I discussed several novels in the spy fiction genre.

If you are participating in the Six Degrees meme this month, where did your links take you? If not, have you read these books? 

The next Six Degrees will be on September 2, 2023, and the starting book will be Wifedom by Anna Funder.

A Summer Challenge: 20 Books of Summer 2023

 

This is my eighth year of participating in the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge. The event is hosted by Cathy at 746 Books. 

This year, 20 Books of Summer starts June 1st and ends September 1st. I completed my list of 20 books in 2018 and 2019, but in other years I had mixed results. 

I always have a problem with reviewing all the books, but this year I am putting my priority on reviewing the books rather than finishing the list. We will see how that goes.

The event is very flexible. You can go for 15 Books of Summer or 10 Books of Summer if 20 is more than you want to commit to. Books can be substituted along the way. And that is fine. See this link for a description of the event. 

Coming up with the list is the best part. Here is my list of books.

Mysteries

Mindful of Murder by Susan Juby

A Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths

Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo

A Man's Head by Georges Simenon

Murder Most Fowl by Bill Crider

The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny 

Disco for the Departed by Colin Cotterill

Sleep and His Brother by Peter Dickinson

The Mitford Murders by Jessica Fellowes

Spy Fiction

Our Man in Camelot by Anthony Price

SS-GB by Len Deighton (alternative history)

The Mulberry Bush by Charles McCarry

The Doomsday Carrier by Victor Canning

Science Fiction 

The Last Colony by John Scalzi

Fiction

The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff and Frank Doel

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullars

Nonfiction

Jane Austen Cover to Cover by Margaret Sullivan

Number One Is Walking: My Life in the Movies and Other Diversions by Steve Martin, illus. by Harry Bliss (graphic novel)

A Fire Story by Brian Fies (graphic novel)

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Spy Fiction Authors

 

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's topic is a Genre Freebie (pick any genre and build a list for that genre). 

I picked espionage fiction and I am listing my favorite authors in the genre. I limited the list to eight authors. The first two authors are my top two spy fiction authors but beyond that it is hard to decide and the order could change at any time. 

The number of books by the author's name is the number of books that I have read by them.

Charles McCarry (10 books)

I discovered the spy novels of Charles McCarry in 2009 and read them all in a few months (including the two political thrillers that are only peripherally related). Most of the novels written by Charles McCarry are about Paul Christopher, an intelligence agent for the CIA (called "the Outfit" in his books). Some of them go back and forth between events around the World War II years and the 1960's, exploring Christopher's youth and family history. Those nine books were written between 1971 and 2007. McCarry also published The Shanghai Factor in 2013 and The Mulberry Bush in 2015.

Len Deighton (16 books)

Deighton has written two spy fiction series. My favorite is the Bernard Samson series. I have read all nine books in that series, plus Winter, a historical novel which features characters from the Samson series. Deighton is probably best known for his Nameless Spy series (also known as the Harry Palmer series, because of the film adaptations). I have read four of those and I like them, but they are not my favorites of his books. And the great thing about him is I still have at least ten books of his to read.

Anthony Price (5 books)

Anthony Price only wrote 19 novels, all about David Audley, a British spy. I love this kind of spy fiction, which TV Tropes describes as the Stale Beer flavor: more realistic, not romanticizing the subject, grittier. The focus in these books is on characterization and intellect, not action, although there is some of that present. Most of the books in this series have historical events infused into a present day story. In Other Paths to Glory it is World War I and the battlefields of the Somme. In Colonel Butler's Wolf, the site of the story is Hadrian's Wall.

Mick Herron (9 books)

Mick Herron is best known for the Slough House series about MI5 spies who have been demoted due to some disgrace or screw up in their jobs, and are now working under Jackson Lamb. The first book was Slow Horses. I have read 7 books in that series, and the stories get better and better. I still have the last two books in that series to read, plus a stand alone book (set in the same universe as Slough House). And some novellas that are related to the series.

Olen Steinhauer (11 books)

Olen Steinhauer has written twelve full-length novels and I have read all but one of them. His first five novels were historical novels (the Yalta Boulevard series set in a fictional Eastern bloc country) and not strictly spy fiction but there were some espionage elements. After that he began the Milo Weaver series. Weaver is in the CIA; in the first book he is in the "Tourist" division, a group that does dirty work for the CIA. He also wrote a couple of very good standalone novels.

John le Carré (8 books)

I could not do a list like this and not include John le Carré. I don't know exactly how many novels he has written, somewhere between 25 and 30? I have only read 8 of his books, and most of the ones I read featured George Smiley, his best-known character. However, my favorite book by le Carré is A Perfect Spy, about a British spy assigned to an important post in Vienna who disappears after he gets a call that his father has died. It is around 600 pages long and I loved every page of it. John le Carré writes eloquently; he develops his characters bit by bit and pulls me into the story. 

Charles Cumming (5 books)

Charles Cumming has been publishing spy fiction novels since 2001 but his books are relatively new to me. I have only read five of the eleven books he has published. The books I have read and enjoyed are A Spy by Nature (Alec Milius #1 and his first novel), A Foreign Country (Thomas Kell #1), A Colder War (another Thomas Kell book), and Box 88, the beginning of a new series. Box 88 features Lachlan Kite, an agent for a covert spy agency. Kite is abducted, possibly by terrorists, after leaving the funeral of an old friend from boarding school. It turns out that the abduction is related to an event in the late 1980s when Lachlan was just out of boarding school, visiting his friend in France. At that time Lachlan began spying for the Box 88 group, and there are flashbacks to his introduction to the craft of spying. It was an excellent book.

Dan Fesperman (5 books)

I debated whether I should include Dan Fesperman or not. He has written thirteen books, but I am not sure how many of them are spy fiction. I have read several of his books which are combinations of spy fiction and adventure. Examples are The Small Boat of Great Sorrows (set in Bosnia, 1998) and The Arms Maker of Berlin (two time lines, one in 2009, the other in World War II). His most recent series is definitely spy fiction; both Safe Houses and The Cover Wife feature female CIA agents in Germany. And I was very favorable impressed by those books. 

 

These are not the only authors of espionage fiction that I enjoy, but for many of the authors I have only read one book or their focus is on other types of fiction.

I would love to hear from anyone who has opinions about these authors or suggestions for other authors I should try.

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Authors that I have read at least 10 books by

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week's Top Ten Tuesday topic is a Freebie, and we can come up with our own topic. I am actually returning to an earlier topic, Authors I've Read the Most Books By. My version will be my Top Ten Authors that I have read at least 10 books by. Keep in mind that I only have records for the last 19 years. But that works fine because these are my current top ten authors, and tastes change over time.

And here's my list:

Rex Stout (54 - 47 Nero Wolfe books plus 3 Tecumseh Fox books plus 4 standalone mysteries)

The Nero Wolfe series began in 1934 with Fer-de-Lance; the last book in the series, A Family Affair, was published in 1975, shortly before Stout's death. I have reread every book in the series several times over the decades.

Nero Wolfe is a lover of orchids and fine food, who supports himself as a private detective, charging exorbitant fees. Archie Goodwin, the narrator of the stories, is both his assistant and a private investigator, and he does most of the legwork. The series combines a genius armchair detective with a hard-boiled detective, and you get the best of both worlds.

Agatha Christie (28 plus)

I love both of Agatha Christie's main sleuths: Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Originally I was irritated by Poirot's self-importance and conceit, but now I find him very charming. And I especially enjoy the books that Hastings narrates. I have other favorite characters that show up in more than one book (Colonel Race, Inspector Japp, Superintendent Battle). And all of the standalone books that I have read so far have been very good.

Emma Lathen (23 plus 4 as R.B. Dominic)

John Putnam Thatcher, senior vice president and director of the trust department of Sloan Guaranty Trust on Wall Street, is the protagonist of Lathen's 24 book series. Banking on Death (1961) is the first in the series, and I reread it in 2017 because the story is set around Christmas. Most of the books are focused on one type of business that is using the services of the Sloan, and the story shares many facts about the running of the specific types of businesses, and the financial relationships. Emma Lathen is the pen name for two American authors: Martha Henissart and Mary Jane Latsis.

Margery Allingham (18)

I think I have only read books from the Albert Campion series. Allingham has a beautiful way of telling a story and creating interesting characters. Albert Campion is a wonderful character, of course, but there is also Albert's manservant, Magersfontein Lugg, a former burglar who has done prison time and has criminal contacts. Campion ages as the series goes on and the character changes over time. And the female characters are well done, intelligent, strong, and independent.

Len Deighton (15)

Now we get to one of my favorite spy fiction authors. I have read all nine of the Bernard Samson series, plus Winter, a historical novel which features characters from the Samson series. He is probably best known for his Nameless Spy series. I have read four of those and I like them, but they are not my favorites of his books. And the great thing about him is I still have at least ten books of his to read.

Jill McGown - 13

Jill McGown wrote 13 novels in the Chief Inspector Lloyd and Sergeant Judy Hill series, plus five standalone novels. I have only read the books in the series, and I read them all in 2007. The books do not follow a formula. Lloyd and Hill, and their ongoing relationship, are the mainstays of the series, but each book takes a different approach to telling the story.

S. J. Rozan - 12

I was very excited when S.J. Rozan published the 12th book in the Lydia Chin / Bill Smith mystery series last year. That is one my favorite contemporary mystery series and the previous book was published in 2011. Bill Smith is a white private investigator in his forties who lives in Manhattan; Lydia Chin is an American-born Chinese private investigator in her late twenties who lives in New York’s Chinatown with her mother.  They are not partners but they often work together on cases. The element that I have always liked about this series is that the narrator of the books alternates. The first book was narrated by Lydia; the second book was narrated by Bill; and so on. With that approach, each book reveals more about the personality and the backstory of the two protagonists.

Olen Steinhauer - 11

Another of my favorite spy fiction authors. Steinhauer has written twelve full-length novels and I have read all but one of them. His first five novels were historical novels (the Yalta Boulevard series set in a fictional Eastern bloc country) and not strictly spy fiction but there were some espionage elements. After that he began the Milo Weaver series. Weaver is in the CIA; in the first book he is in the "Tourist" division, a group that does dirty work for the CIA.

Peter Dickinson - 10

Peter Dickinson has written over fifty books for adults and children. Many of his books for adults are mysteries. My favorite book by Dickinson is King & Joker, an alternate history set in an England where George V's elder brother did not die but lived to become King Victor I, and is later succeeded by his grandson, King Victor II. I am also very fond of his unusual mystery series featuring Superintendent Jimmy Pibble. 

Charles McCarry - 10

I discovered the spy novels by Charles McCarry in 2009 and read them all in a few months (including the two political thrillers that are only peripherally related). Most of the novels written by Charles McCarry are about Paul Christopher, an intelligence agent for the CIA (called "the Outfit" in his books). Some of them go back and forth between events around the World War II years and the 1960's, exploring Christopher's youth and family history. Those nine books were written between 1971 and 2007. McCarry also published The Shanghai Factor in 2013 and The Mulberry Bush in 2015.

Other authors I have read a good number of books by...

Bill Pronzini - 25
Ruth Rendell - 25

Jane Haddam - 24

Robert Barnard - 22

Patricia Moyes - 19

Ngaio Marsh - 16

P. D. James - 16

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.

Monthly Reading in February 2019

In February, I read ten books. Four of the books were not crime fiction, although one was a reference book about classic crime ficton. And I read six crime fiction books, published between 1941 and 2015.

Mystery reference

The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books (2017) by Martin Edwards

From the introduction by Martin Edwards: "This book tells the story of crime fiction published during the first half of the twentieth century. I see it as a tale of the unexpected. The diversity of this much-loved genre is breathtaking, and so much greater than many critics have suggested. To illustrate this, I have chosen one hundred examples of books which highlight the achievements, and sometimes the limitations, of popular fiction of that era." 

The book is comprised of chapters discussing various types of Golden Age mysteries, with several examples of each type examined in detail. My favorite part was the introduction to each group of books, where many other books and authors are briefly discussed.

Nonfiction

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (2015) by Erik Larson

In telling this story of the events leading to the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, Erik Larson focuses on the Lusitania, the U-boat that attacked the ship, and governmental groups in the US and the UK. This was a very entertaining book and I raced through it. Of course, I knew the basic story, but there was so much I did not know, so there were many surprises.

Graphic novel

Descender, Vol. 1, Tin Stars (2015) by Jeff Lemire (Writer),  Dustin Nguyen (Artist)

One of my reading goals in 2019 is to read more of the graphic novels I have. In this science fiction story, TIM-21 is a robot designed to be a companion to a child. He wakes up from a 10-year long sleep to find that everyone on his world is dead and robots have sort of been outlawed. I will be continuing with this series; this was an intriguing start to the story.

Fiction

The Tin Flute (1945) by Gabrielle Roy

This is a classic Canadian novel, first published in French as Bonheur d'occasion. The book tells the story of the Lacasse family in the St. Henri area in Montreal, during World War II. They are poor, and only the oldest daughter, Florentine, is working. Eugene, the oldest brother, has joined the military. The father, Azarius, is usually unemployed, a dreamer, always leaving one job for a "better" opportunity. It took me a while to get into the story, but about halfway into the book it gripped me and I could not stop reading.

Crime Fiction

Murder in Mykonos (2010) by Jeffrey Siger

This is the first book that features Inspector Andreas Kaldis. In this book he is Police Chief on the island of Mykonos, but in later books he works in other parts of Greece. I am looking forward to reading more of the series. Reviewed here.

A Chill Rain in January (1990) by L.R. Wright

This is the third book in the Karl Alberg series by L. R. Wright. Alberg is a Sergeant in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The novel is set in Sechelt, which is on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia, Canada. I have read books 1 and 2 and will be continuing on with the series. Reviewed here.

A Killing in Quail County (1996) by Jameson Cole

This is a perfect story of growing up in the 1950's in rural Oklahoma. Fifteen-year-old Mark Stoddart lives with his older brother Jess, a deputy sheriff in the small town of Bob White. Mark plans to spend his summer looking for evidence of a local bootlegger, to help out his brother. This turns out to be very complicated and more dangerous than he expected. The teenage characters are depicted especially well.

Evil Under the Sun (1941) by Agatha Christie

A while ago we purchased a set of three films based on mystery novels by Agatha Christie, and one of them was Evil Under the Sun. So I skipped ahead to read this book in the Hercule Poirot series out of order. The setting is the Jolly Rogers Hotel, on Smugglers’ Island, off the coast of Devon. A beautiful woman is killed and the murderer must be one of the guests on the island. As usual for an Agatha Christie novel, this is a clever and entertaining story.

The Shanghai Factor (2013) by Charles McCarry

Charles McCarry is one of my favorite writers of spy fiction and this novel did not disappoint. It is narrated by a young male American spy, working as a sleeper agent for an unnamed US agency, who is living in Shanghai to learn Mandarin. Many of the spy novels I have read have an underlying theme of betrayal and mistrust, and this one is no different.  Reviewed here.

All the Old Knives (2015) by Olen Steinhauer

Olen Steinhauer is another of my favorite authors of spy fiction. This book has an unusual format, taking place during a dinner between two people who used to work together at the CIA station in Vienna. Henry is following up on an investigation into the hijacking of an airliner that occurred when Henry and Carol worked together. During the dinner they both think back to that event and we gradually learn how it turned out.