Six Degrees of Separation: From Theory & Practice to The Paris Diversion

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 Theory & Practice  by Michelle de Kretser. This book won the Stella Prize, a major literary award celebrating Australian women’s writing, and championing diversity and cultural change. Theory & Practice is described as autofiction; thus it is a blend between autobiography and fiction. When I was looking into this subgenre of fiction, I was both confused and interested in all the descriptions and various interpretations. 

1st degree:

My first link will be to Outline by Rachel Cusk, which is also described as autofiction. I have that book on my shelves, unread. So I hope to give it a try soon.

The main character in Outline is a novelist who goes to Athens, Greece to teach a writing course during the summer. She has ten conversations with people she meets on the way to Athens and during her stay there.

2nd degree:

The second link is to The Messenger of Athens by Anne Zouroudi. This book takes place mainly on the fictional Greek island, Thiminos. A woman is found dead at the bottom of a cliff; the local police call it an accident. Then a stranger comes to Thiminos from Athens, with the intention of solving her murder.

This is another book I have on my bookshelves. The Greek Detective series gets good reviews and I should read it soon.

3rd degree:

The Light of Day by Eric Ambler starts in Athens and ends up in Turkey.  Arthur Simpson, thief and con man, is hired to drive a car to Turkey. He does not know that he is smuggling illegal weapons in the car, and he is caught by border guards. The authorities force him to deliver the weapons to the people who hired him, in order to uncover their nefarious plans. 

The book was adapted to screen as Topkapi. Peter Ustinov won an Oscar for Supporting Actor for the role of Arthur. Maximilian Schell and Robert Morley also starred.

4th degree:

The James Bond spy thriller From Russia with Love (1957, Ian Fleming) is set in Instanbul, Turkey. The Russians plot to rid themselves of James Bond by faking the defection of a female cipher clerk. Bond is sent to Istanbul to help the defector escape. They take the Orient Express from Istanbul to Paris, where the story ends. Also made into a very successful film, starring Sean Connery.

5th degree:

A good portion of the last book took place on a train and it ended in Paris. That takes me to The Sleeping-Car Murders by Sébastien Japrisot, a French author, screenwriter and film director. This novel was first published in French in 1962. The night train from Marseilles arrives in Paris. In the sleeping car, the body of a young woman is found dead. This is a police procedural and the investigation takes place in Paris.

6th degree:

My last link is to a book that also takes place in Paris. The Paris Diversion by Chris Pavone is an espionage thriller which begins with a terror attack on Paris. It is the second book featuring Kate Moore and her husband Dexter. The first book was The Expats. This is a very fast-paced thriller (at times) but the story is told very well.

This is another Six Degrees where I rediscovered some books on my own shelves that I have not read yet. 

My Six Degrees took me from Athens, Greece to Turkey and then ended up in Paris, France. 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 August 2, 2025, and the starting book will be the 2025 Women’s Prize winner, The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden.

  

J is for Sébastien Japrisot

Today I am featuring the French author, Sébastien Japrisot, for the Crime Fiction Alphabet for 2012 hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise.

Here is a brief author description from Wikipedia. The Wikipedia article gives more information on his novels, translations, screenplay credits, and filmography.

Sébastien Japrisot (4 July 1931 – 4 March 2003) was a French author, screenwriter and film director, born in Marseille. His pseudonym was an anagram of Jean-Baptiste Rossi, his real name. Japrisot has been nicknamed "the Graham Greene of France".

Under his real name, he published his first novel, Les mal partis, in his teens. He followed that by translating fiction from English to French, including several Hopalong Cassidy novels and works by J. D. Salinger. In the early 1960's, he wrote and published his first mystery novel: Compartiment Tueurs, later published with the following titles in English: The Sleeping-Car Murders and The 10:30 to Marseilles. He followed this with three other noir mysteries: Trap for Cinderella, The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun, and One Deadly Summer. Per the overview in The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery by Bruce F. Murphy, all of these novels are unique and there is no series character.

I recently read The Sleeping-Car Murders, which I had purchased years ago. This paragraph from the back cover of the Plume trade paperback edition introduces the action in the book. I prefer to omit any other description of the plot, because I think it would lessen the enjoyment of the novel.

A beautiful young woman lies sprawled on her berth in the sleeping car of the night train from Marseilles to Paris. She is not in the embrace of sleep, or even in the arms of one of her many lovers. She is dead. And the unpleasant task of finding her killer is handed to an overworked, crime-weary police detective named Pierre Emile Grazziano, nicknamed Grazzi, who would rather play hide-and-seek with his little son than cat and mouse with a diabolically cunning, savage murderer.

At first I did not like the style of the writing. Within the first two or three chapters, I became immersed in the story and adjusted to the writing style. The plot is very complex, and once I got into the story, I was hooked.

The book is relatively short, which was probably good or I might have gotten lost keeping track of the characters. The book is organized in chapters by each occupant of a berth in the sleeping car, as the detectives search for these persons who may have clues to what happened. One subplot follows what happens to one of the sleeping car occupants as she gets settled in Paris, and I found that to be very well done.

The book is a police procedural, and we get indications of the personal lives of the detectives and the pressures they experience as they work through the investigation, and this is accomplished without distractions from the main plot.

Several of Japrisot's novels have been made into films. The film for this book was directed by Costas-Gravas. As noted in this review at Mystery*File:

Before he made his mark as a political director with leftist leanings, Costa-Gravas made his debut with this slick little police thriller about the hunt for a mad killer.

I looked into the availability of that film but to my knowledge it is not currently on DVD.

Japrisot is best known in the US for his 1991 novel, A Very Long Engagement (original title, Un long dimanche de fiançailles), which was made into a very successful French-language film in 2004, by director Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

I had the same problem with writing style when I read A Very Long Engagement. And in that case I never really adjusted to the writing and I did not enjoy the book fully because of it. Maybe because it was longer and an even longer cast of characters. However, I found it a beautiful story about a very determined young woman's search for the truth. I also learned more about World War I and France during that time period.  I saw and enjoyed the movie, and perhaps would enjoy reading the book more the second time around. In The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery, it is described as a historical mystery.

I would love to hear from anyone who has read books by Japrisot and get recommendations for further reading.

Please visit the post at Mysteries in Paradise to check out other entries for the letter J.