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.

The Last Defector: Tony Cape

I read Tony Cape's first book featuring Derek Smailes, The Cambridge Theorum,  almost exactly eight years ago, right before I started blogging. I liked it a lot and I was grateful that Felony and Mayhem had published a new edition of that book.

In the first book, Derek Smailes is a detective sergeant in Cambridge. He investigates the suicide of a student at the university who was researching the possibility of a fifth Cambridge spy. That book begins as a police procedural and morphs into spy fiction. Set in the 1980s, it was first published in 1989.

In the follow-up to that first novel, Derek has been offered a position in MI-5, and has decided to accept it because he will be sent to New York for his first assignment. He has always had an interest in the US and its culture and he is delighted to be able to experience it directly. He has a junior position as a security officer at the British Mission to the UN. The story is set when the Cold War is coming to an end and disarmament talks are going on (late 1980s).

Based on a recording recovered from a listening device, Derek's superiors plan to try to convince a Soviet citizen also working at the UN to defect and provide information on disarmament plans in Russia. They decide to use Derek as the contact point for the mission, and allow him to plan the approach. The setup of the scheme to soften up the Russian for defection is complex and intriguing. A secondary plot in The Last Defector takes place in the Soviet Union, and follows a conspiracy to take over the government due to dissatisfaction with the current leader.

Initially the planned defection goes well, but as things start to fall apart, Derek ends up suspecting just about everyone he is working with of treachery, even the woman he wants to marry. He is a more realistic protagonist than some I have encountered in spy fiction. He is eager to take on a challenging assignment that could give his career a quick shot in the arm, but has doubts about his abilities and whether he and his group are doing the right thing.

I found this second book in the Derek Smailes series to be a worthy successor to the first. The plot was complex but not confusing. There were a lot of characters to keep track of, but that wasn't a problem either. The people he works with are well developed characters, with different personalities, but the officials back in Russia are more stereotypical. However, that seems to be true in many spy books I have read.

As with the first book, it was the development of the main character, Derek, and his new relationships in his job and with his ex-wife and daughter back in England, that made this book especially enjoyable to read. I like it when espionage stories explore the characters personal lives and motives, and I was happy that I made the effort to find a copy of the second book in this series.

This biographical information is available at Felony and Mayhem:

Tony Cape was born in Wales and grew up in Yorkshire before attending Cambridge University. After working as a journalist in Northern Ireland and England he moved to the United States in 1977 to join the Buddhist community of Tibetan meditation master Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche. In the 1990s, he published a series of spy novels featuring Derek Smailes, a former police detective turned counterintelligence officer. The first of these, The Cambridge Theorem, became a bestseller in Britain and Italy, and was re-released by Felony and Mayhem Press in 2006.

See my review of The Cambridge Theorem.


-----------------------------

Publisher:  Doubleday, 1991.
Length:      390 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Derek Smailes, #2
Setting:      New York City, US; UK
Genre:       Spy fiction
Source:      I purchased my copy in 2013.

Six Degrees of Separation from A Christmas Carol to Mr. Ive's Christmas

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 other books, forming a chain. Every month she provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting point this month is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, thus this is a perfect first post for December. I am sure I have read this story long ago, but then maybe I am just familiar with film adaptations. (My favorite is Scrooged with Bill Murray.) I do have the illustrated edition pictured here, and I will be reading it this month.

For my first link I will make the obvious connection, another book with a Christmas theme.


The Shortest Day by Jane Langton is set in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Homer and Mary Kelly are teaching a class at Harvard University. Mary is participating in the annual Christmas Revels when a young singer in the event dies in an automobile accident. When other deaths follow, Homer resists getting involved, even though he was once a homicide detective.

I next link to another book featuring an academic setting ... Murder is Academic by Christine Poulson. The UK title is Dead Letters. This is the first book in Poulson's Cassandra James series. Cassandra becomes the Head of the English department at St. Etheldreda's College at the University of Cambridge, after the former Head, a close friend, dies. This is one of my favorite academic mysteries.

I move on to another book set at the University of Cambridge, The Cambridge Theorum. The main character, Derek Smailes, is a police detective assigned to investigate the death of an undergraduate. It is a combination of a police procedural and an espionage novel.

My next choice would be The Becket Factor by Michael David Anthony, which also includes elements of espionage with another subgenre, this time a clerical mystery. Published in 1990, politics, local and national, are also touched on. The main setting for this book is a cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral, and its surroundings, which leads me to another book set in a Cathedral close.

Close Quarters by Michael Gilbert was my first exposure to life in a Cathedral close, which made it doubly interesting. That book was published much earlier, in 1947, and is very much a traditional puzzle-type mystery.

My last book in the chain has even more of a religious emphasis, and takes us back to the Christmas theme. Mr. Ive's Christmas by Oscar Hijuelos is a novel that tells the story of a man's life and the grief he suffers when his son dies in a senseless robbery a few days before Christmas. Mr. Ives' religious beliefs and faith are at the center of this book, but family relationships and friendships are also stressed.

My chain this month began and ended with Christmas stories, and in the middle there were books with academic or ecclesiastical settings. I look forward to seeing the direction of other Six Degrees posts.

C is for The Cambridge Theorem

Again I am participating in the Crime Fiction Alphabet community meme. This week we are up to the letter C, and I am eager to see what other participants have covered. Please visit the post at Mysteries in Paradise to check out other C entries.

My choice is The Cambridge Theorem by Tony Cape. This is a first novel by an author who produced four mysteries between 1989 and 1996. This book is a combination of police procedural and spy fiction. Right up my alley. I read the book in January of this year, before I started this blog.

The description on the book cover sums it up well:

"When Simon Bowles commits suicide, no one is surprised. A graduate student at Cambridge University, Bowles had a long history of depression. But as Detective Sergeant Derek Smailes soon discovers, he also had an extraordinary knack for solving historical mysteries. His most recent project: Uncovering the identity of the fabled “fifth man” in the notorious Cambridge spy-ring of the 1930s. Could Bowles possibly have solved that mystery? And could his solution—his “theorem”—have brought about his death?"

It is obvious from the beginning that there is something brewing related to the Cambridge spies, but it is not clear if it actually has anything to do with the demise of Simon Bowles. Every one else involved considers the death of the graduate student to be a suicide... but DS Derek Smailes isn't so sure. He gets interested and follows up on some inconsistencies.

The title of the book refers to the student's extracurricular activities: using mathematical logic to solve problems. In this case both the possible existence of a fifth Cambridge spy and the solution to the Kennedy assassination.  The plot centers on the investigation into a possible conspiracy to cover up a murder, and whether this relates Simon Bowles' investigation into the Cambridge spies or not. 

I enjoy spy fiction for the stories of corruption and betrayals. Police procedurals are a favorite sub-genre for me. With elements of both, this book kept me entertained for all of its 430 pages.   However, it was the development of the main character, Derek, and his backstory, that pushed up another level for me. The exploration of why he is a policeman and his complex relationship with his father and how this drives his actions was well done.

The book is set in the early 1980's, and was published in 1989. The copy I have was published by Felony & Mayhem and I discovered it at a wonderful independent bookstore that has an extensive mystery collection. There are three more books by Tony Cape (per Fantastic Fiction) and as far as I can tell, they all are continuations of the Derek Smailes series. The second and third are available at a reasonable price (used, online), but finding the fourth one is more difficult.  I would like to know more about the author, Tony Cape, but was unsuccessful in my research.

More information related to the book:
Online article about the Cambridge spies at BBC News
At Felony & Mayhem
A review by B. Morrison