It’s time for the super monthly tag Six Degrees of Separation, which is hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest, Six Degrees of Separation #6degrees picks a starting book for participants to go wherever it takes them in six more steps. Links to my reviews are in the titles of the books chosen. The starter book this month is:
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
Just one family remain on the island which is in danger of being flooded. When a stranger washes up on the shore, they nurse her back to life, but who is she? Twisty and turny apparently. I haven’t read it, so I’ll take wild from the title to link to:
Running Wild by J.G. Ballard
Set in an exclusive gated housing estate with state of the art security systems and discreet guards. The families that live there are from the aspirant middle classes, with good jobs that pay excellent salaries, they live in comfortable, safe, luxury – an ideal place to bring up their children. However, early one morning, in just ten minutes, thirty-two adults – all the parents, the guards, some of the helps – were murdered. The thirteen children are missing, presumed abducted. No ransom was ever demanded: the police are at a complete loss. What happened? The gated community is my link to:
Betty Boo by Claudia Pineiro
t begins with the discovery of a murder. A maid arrives at the country club where she works, gets through security – this is a gated community for the rich – and starts cleaning her employer’s house. She gets to the lounge where she discovers him dead in his armchair, his throat cut. An industrialist, she was aid to be involved in merky dealings, and his wife had been murdered three years before. Enter Nurit, a novelist who finds herself house-sitting and writing colour pieces for the newspaper, while the Crime desk editor investigates the crime. A classy Argentine crime novel indeed. My link is the country club this time leading to:
Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell
Published in 1959 and set between the wars, Mrs Bridge is the story of a Kansas City housewife. She’s married to the well-off but workaholic Mr Bridge, and they live in a nice suburban house in a nice area of the city. They have three children, each separated by a couple of years: Ruth, Carolyn and Douglas. Her story is told in a series of 117 first person vignettes, which vary in length from a paragraph to a few pages. Each chapterette is perfectly structured – like a little short story, with its introduction, development and ending. There is much humour, particularly in her exchanges with son Douglas who is typically exasperatig, but overall it’s infused with her melancholy as she struggles find her place. My link will be bridge, taking me to:
The Black Dog by Kevin Bridges
The Glaswegian comedian’ Kevin Bridges’s debut novel was fun – not too ‘Irvine Welsh’ in terms of dialect rather than subject matter, and after an opening section full of it with liberal sprinklings of the c-word, we discover it was a performance piece for Declan’s creative writing class. After finishing it he realises he has ‘misread the room’, his classmates and tutor are rather aghast at his depiction of a young working class man having a breakdown. Twenty-something Declan, stacks shelves at the supermarket part-time and dreams of becoming a writer, but there is a darkness in his head that battles to overcome his dreams. His pet labrador, Hector, his best friend Doof Doof and his mum, who always worries for him, help to keep him grounded. That night when he meets Doof Doof in the pub, Declan is wired and boozed up already having needed to calm down after the class, so when a group of hangers on of the local drugs baron start being rude to barmaid Georgie, whom Declan really fancies, Declan stands up for her and hits one of them, and he finds his card is marked. Even worse, one of this group used to be Declan’s best friend before he turned to the dark side. Declan begins to descend into depression and paranoia at the thought of what they may be planning for him…. Another dark comic thriller set in Glasgow is:
Paperboy by Callum McSorley
This is the sequel to McSorley’s superb debut Squeaky Clean, and follows on directly, so you’ll need to read that first. It featured ‘Glasgow’s least popular detective’ DI Allison ‘Ally’ McQuoist, on the trail of gang boss Paulo McGuinn, who was running his business from a car wash. In trying to help one of McGuinn’s men escape to a better life, she ended up getting her hands dirty too, but McGuinn ended up dead and she got a promotion. DCI McQuoist is having to deal with the fall-out from McGuinn’s demise. There’s McGuinn’s wife, who is as hard as nails, and there is McGuinn’s number two who is as mean as they come, plus a corrupt solicitor. And then there is Simply Shred! What a name for a confidential shredding service – which provides the running joke through the book… It’s as funny and violent and gritt as the first book, you have been warned. Another Glasgow-set novel in which the main character shares their name with a real person is;
The Cut-up by Louise Welsh
This is the third novel by Welsh to feature Rilke, valuer for Bowery Auctions in Glasgow. The first Rilke novel, Welsh’s debut, The Cutting Room from 2002 was superb, followed by The Second Cut some years later. It’s not strictly necessary to have read the others, but the first one sets the scene and helps you get to know the characters. Rilke is such a brilliant character. Well-connected with Glasgow’s shadier side, but mostly aloof from its direct influence, he is perhaps the most-nuanced gay man I’ve read on the page. We don’t know his age, but he must be fortyish. He always wears a suit, having a tendency to look funereal, but his ‘gaydar’ is always working despite his devotion to Rose, the owner of the auction house. He has a strong sense of moral justice, and although his methods may be unconventional, he will always help to right a wrong. With a pint on his mind, Rilke is closing up shop at Bowery Auctions, when he sees a bundle of what could be rags in a corner of the yard. Fly-tipping? As he closes in, he thinks it could be a rough sleeper, but when he gets there, it’s a man, dead, and what’s more he recognises him. This is the start of an involved plot as Rilke struggles to prove Rose, who is implicated, innocent. Superb, once again.
My picks have gone from the home counties to the USA, down to Argentina and then back to Glasgow where they stayed for 3 excellent thrillers with extra links. Where will your six degrees take you this month?
