Six Degrees of Separation: From Sandwich to The Wheel Spins

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 Sandwich by Catherine Newman, which I have not read... but I do have a copy that I am planning to read. The story takes place during an annual family visit to Cape Cod.

1st degree:

My first link is to The Cape Cod Mystery, published in 1931 by Phoebe Atwood Taylor. It is the first book in the Asey Mayo series. In the middle of a sweltering hot summer on Cape Cod, a man's body is discovered in a cottage. A sheriff arrests Bill Porter for murder, based on circumstantial evidence. Bill asks his friend, Asey Mayo, to find out who really committed the crime. The author knew Cape Cod quite well, and her depiction of it in this book is humorous and entertaining.

2nd degree:

Death in the Off-Season is a much more recent mystery set on Nantucket, an island about 30 miles south of Cape Cod. Merry Folger is a new detective in the Nantucket police, working under her father. This novel is the first book in the Merry Folger Nantucket Mystery series and was first published in 1994. Later it was republished by Soho in 2016, with edits to bring the series up to modern times. That worked well for me, and I liked the characters and the setting.

3rd degree:

The previous book was a police procedural and that is a favorite subgenre for me. Diamond Solitaire by Peter Lovesey is also part of a police procedural series, this time set in London and featuring Peter Diamond. But as this third book in the series begins, the police detective is no longer in the police, and is working as a security guard at Harrods in London. This wonderful story takes the reader to New York and then to Japan as the protagonist goes in search of the identity of a young Japanese girl.

4th degree:

So now I move to a police procedural set in Japan, Under the Midnight Sun by Keigo Higashino. This book starts out as a police procedural, then turns into something else. Detective Sasagaki is investigating the death of a man in an empty building. He starts with the victim's family, a wife and a son about 10 years old, and his place of business, a pawnshop. The case is dropped for lack of evidence although Sasagaki continues to look for more information related to the crime. The middle section of the book follows the lives of people related to the victim in the years leading up to the death. As the story gets closer to the end, Detective Sasagaki comes back into the story and the crime is solved. This book was originally published in 1999, and the novel portrays life in Japan in the 1970s to the 1990s, with changing fads, various stages of education, office life, and characters at various economic levels.

5th degree:

Staying with Japan and police procedurals, I turn to Tokyo Express, Seichō Matsumoto's first novel, published in 1958. In this novel, two detectives in different cities in Japan investigate the same crime and collaborate, sharing their thoughts and discoveries. A man and a woman are found dead on a beach in Kashii, and the police assume that it is a double suicide. The alibis of their suspects depend on train schedules, so a good amount of time is spent on that aspect of the alleged crime. This is a good picture of Japan after World War II; it was first published in English translation as Points and Lines.

6th degree:

Picking up on the emphasis on trains in the last book, I am moving to The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White, which takes place primarily on a train. This book was filmed as The Lady Vanishes, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. A young woman, Iris, meets an older lady while traveling on a train in Europe. They have tea and talk for a while, and then, Iris takes a nap. When she awakens, Miss Froy, the older woman, has disappeared, and the other people in the same carriage deny that there ever was a Miss Froy in the  carriage. The Wheel Spins was published in 1936, and is an excellent picture of the tensions in Europe in the 1930s.

My Six Degrees took me from Cape Cod and other coastal areas in the US, on to the UK and Japan, and finally to an unnamed area in Europe prior to World War II.  If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your chain take you?

The next Six Degrees will be on January 4th, 2025 and the starting book will be the 2024 Booker winner, Orbital by Samantha Harvey.

Reading Summary for September 2021

September was another very good reading month. This month's reading was all crime fiction. Two books of the eight I read were spy thrillers, but I count those in crime fiction. 

Crime Fiction

The Lady Vanishes (1936) by Ethel Lina White

The Lady Vanishes was originally published as The Wheel Spins in 1936. Two years later the book was adapted to film by Alfred Hitchcock, with the title The Lady Vanishes, so many editions of the book have the same title as the film. I had seen the film many times, and now I am glad that I have also read the book. The book is more suspenseful and serious, with more realistic characters, but both are good. See my full review here.

Murder (1987) by Parnell Hall

Murder was the second book in the Stanley Hastings series. Stanley is a bumbling private detective (sort of). His primary work is following up on accident reports where people want to sue for damages, but in the two books I have read, he gets involved in investigations on the side, helping people who need favors or at the request of his wife. This is a humorous series where Stanley handles serious crimes and helps people out. See my review here.

The Chinese Shawl (1943) by Patricia Wentworth

The fifth Miss Silver mystery by Patricia Wentworth. I love the Miss Silver series, and this one was especially good, with the wartime setting. I am trying to finish all the books in this series set during the war or immediately afterward before I move on to later ones or Wentworth's novels that don't feature Miss Silver.

Blackout in Gretley (1942) by J. B. Priestley

This is the second book I have read by Priestley. My husband got it recently and liked it very much. The setting and genre were perfect for me, World War II espionage fiction, with the protagonist trying to locate Nazi spies in a Midlands town in England. 

A Siege of Bitterns (2014) by Steve Burrows

This is the first book in the Birder Murder Mystery Series; the main protagonist is DCI Domenic Jejeune. He is the new DCI in the Norfolk town of Saltmarsh. A TV presenter and ecological activist is murdered, and Jejeune is heading the investigation. Birding is big in the area, and Jejeune is a birder. I loved the passages about birds and the ecology of the area and the mystery was handled well too. Check out Rick Robinson's review at Tip the Wink.

The Stranger Diaries (2018) by Elly Griffiths

This is a modern mystery story with gothic elements. I have never been a big fan of gothic stories, but I enjoyed this one. For me it was a slow read, but I was always eager to get back to reading the book. I liked the structure of the book with the story told from the viewpoint of three characters, and the book framed by a ghost story, which is slowly revealed throughout the book. This was the perfect read for R.I.P. XVI (Readers Imbibing Peril).

Home to Roost (1976) by Andrew Garve

Andrew Garve is a pseudomym of Paul Winterton, who wrote over 40 detective and adventure books between 1938 and 1978. Home to Roost isn't a straightforward mystery or detective story, more of a suspense novel, told in first person by a successful author who writes adventure novels. This is the first book I have read by this author, and I will be reading more of his books. The novel was published in 1976 and is the first book I read for the 1976 Club. 

Catch a Falling Spy (1976) by Len Deighton

Originally published in England under the title Twinkle Twinkle Little Spy. Len Deighton is one of my favorite authors, and this is a cold war spy novel. The narrator is nameless, although I am not sure he is the same nameless spy as in Deighton's earliest novels. The action starts and ends in Algeria, with hops to France, Ireland, and several locations in the US. A very complex story, not for everyone but perfect for me. Another book I read for the 1976 Club.

The plant shown immediately above is Veronica (Spiked Speedwell). The plant shown at the top of the post is Tibouchina heteromalla (Silver leafed Princess Flower). Both are entirely new plants to me, and we bought them to plant in our yard this year.

The Lady Vanishes (AKA The Wheel Spins): Ethel Lina White

In 1938, Alfred Hitchcock released The Lady Vanishes, a film based on a book by Ethel Lina White, The Wheel Spins. The book was published in 1936. The film differs in many ways from the book, but having seen the film before, several times, I knew the basic premise of book. A young woman, Iris, meets an older lady while traveling on a train. They have tea and talk for a while, and then, Iris takes a nap. When she awakens, Miss Froy, the older woman, has disappeared, and the other people in the same carriage deny that there ever was a Miss Froy in the  carriage.

Iris frantically searches for the woman Miss Froy, and can not find her. When she asks other passengers on the train to comfirm that they saw her, no one will admit that she exists. Even other English passengers on the train from the hotel, who had seen Miss Froy on the train, deny that they saw her. They each have their own reasons, but that doesn't help Iris. 

The panic she feels when no one believes her or will listen to her is palpable. For various reasons, she lets herself be convinced that she imagined the old lady, that she was having hallucinations. The only other explanation is that there is a conspiracy afoot to cover up Miss Froy's absence, which seems ridiculous.

My thoughts...

This is a mystery, but it is also a character study and full of psychological suspense, with a bit of romance thrown in. It is hard for me to judge how much I was affected by previous viewings of the film when reading this book. I think it did cut down on some of the tension. I enjoyed reading the book and I preferred it to the film, if only because the characters are better developed.

The novel explored Iris's character and psychology. As the book opens, she is at the hotel, a remote vacation spot in Europe, with a large group of friends. She is kind of flighty, does not have a lot of self-confidence, drifts into relationships.  The friends are artificial, obnoxious, and shallow, and she grows tired of them. She decides not to leave the resort when they leave, but to wait until a day or two later. Thus when she runs into trouble on the train, she is alone and has no one to turn to. She does eventually find a young man her age who helps her out. Iris's behavior matures on this trip. She wants to throw off the superficiality of her previous life. 

I also liked that the book gives us brief glimpses of Miss Froy's family at home, with her parents and her dog eagerly awaiting her return from her governess job for a government official in a distant country.

We watched the 1938 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave, again after I finished the novel. I enjoyed it as usual, although I noticed the changes to the story this time around. There is much more humor in the film, and the blossoming romance between Iris and a young man on the train is more believable. All the characters are different from the book. The ending is more tense and more thrillerish. 

The edition I read contained this novel plus one other by Ethel Lina White, The Spiral Staircase, which was first published as Some Must Watch in 1933.

Also see:

Christine Poulson's post at A Reading Life on Ethel Lina White and her career, titled A Forgotten Woman Crime Novelist.

Reviews at Clothes in Books, FictionFan's Book Reviews, and Crossexaminingcrime.

This is my first book read in September for the R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril event.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Wordsworth Classics, 2015 (orig. publ. 1936)
Length:       157 pages (of tiny print)
Format:       Trade paperback
Setting:       Train trip through Europe

Genre:        Mystery
Source:       I purchased my copy in 2017.

Five Years of Blogging

Today I am celebrating the fifth anniversary of my first blog post.

In the last year I have blogged less but enjoyed it just as much as ever. I am basing this mainly on numbers of posts; my average number of posts on the blog in 2016 was 8 a month. In 2015 I posted on the average 11 posts a month. I have noticed that my posts are longer now, more verbose, even though one of my goals is to cut down on the length of the posts. But I will continue blogging as long as I enjoy writing up my thoughts on the books, along with including some background on the authors.

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 organizing and writing down 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 I am constantly amazed at how much more there is to learn.

Two vintage authors that I just read about recently were Christopher Bush (at Vintage Pop Fictions) and Roy Vickers, specifically The Department of Dead Ends (at Tip the Wink).

And I will end with some lovely books covers of books I hope to read this year.

                                      Reviewed at The Thrilling Detective.

                                                  Reviewed at Clothes in Books.

                                                 Reviewed at The Dusty Bookcase.

                                      In the Spotlight at Confessions of a Mystery Novelist...

Short Stories with a Christmas Theme

Last year I started reading stories from The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries, edited and with an introduction by Otto Penzler. It is one of those huge books: around 650 pages with two columns per page, and 59 stories. (That is how many I counted, some descriptions say 60 stories.) So it will be a few years before I finish reading all of them.

The stories are divided up into groups:

• A Traditional Little Christmas
• A Funny Little Christmas
• A Sherlockian Little Christmas
• A Pulpy Little Christmas
• An Uncanny Little Christmas
• A Scary Little Christmas
• A Surprising Little Christmas
• A Modern Little Christmas
• A Puzzling Little Christmas
• A Classic Little Christmas

So far I have read mainly stories from the first section of Traditional Christmas stories. My favorites in that section are:

"The Butler's Christmas Eve" by Mary Roberts Rinehart

First published in her short story collection Alibi for Isabel (New York, Farrar & Rinehart, 1944). I enjoyed this for the wartime setting. It was sort of a spy story, but it was really about a family and friendships, and I liked it a lot.

"The Adventure of the Dauphin's Doll" by Ellery Queen

First published in the December 1948 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. I did not expect to like it as much as I did, but I was charmed with the description of the Queen family Christmas dinner preparations.

"So it was that when Attorney John S. Bondling called, Inspector Queen was in his kitchen, swathed in a barbecue apron, up to his elbows in fines herbes, while Ellery, behind the locked door of his study, composed a secret symphony in glittering fuchsia metallic paper, forest-green moiré ribbon, and pine cones."

This was an impossible crime story. The solution seemed fairly obvious to me, but it was still fun to read. The best part is that the structure and the humor reminded of the episodes of the Ellery Queen TV show, starring Jim Hutton. This story is examined in more detail at Reading Ellery Queen and Cross Examining Crime.

“MoreThan Flesh and Blood” by Susan Moody

This was first published in A Classic Christmas Crime, edited by Tim Heald (London, Pavilion, 1995). I thought this was a very good story, and very dark. It is the story of a man who has finally found a long lost relative after a long search. It loosely has a Christmas theme, but it did not seem to fit into the Traditional Christmas story section at all.

"The Haunted Crescent” by Peter Lovesey

This one is from the section titled Uncanny Little Christmas stories. It was first published in Mistletoe Mysteries, edited by Charlotte MacLeod (NewYork, Mysterious Press, 1989). That is actually where I first read the story. The story is narrated by a man looking into the reported haunting of a house in Bath.

"The ghost was reputed to walk on Christmas Eve. Knowing of my interest, they had generously placed their house at my disposal. I am an ex-policeman, by the way, and it takes a lot to frighten me." 

It is not a scary ghost story but it does have a nice twist. Very enjoyable reading.

Several other stories that are in this book appeared in Silent Nights, which I reviewed last year. These are:

• "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" by Arthur Conan Doyle 
• "The Flying Stars" by G. K. Chesterton
• "The Necklace of Pearls" by Dorothy L. Sayers
• "The Case is Altered" by Margery Allingham
• "Waxworks" by Ethel Lina White
• "Cambric Tea" by Marjorie Bowen

Of those, my favorite was "Waxworks" by Ethel Lina White, which I discuss here.

And how could I forget to mention my favorite Christmas story: "Christmas Party" by Rex Stout, which is in the Classic Little Christmas section. I first read that in a collection of four novellas in the book And Four to Go.  It was first published in Collier's, January 4, 1957, as "The Christmas-Party Murder". I reviewed it here.