Six Degrees of Separation – from Dangerous Liaisons to Mrs. Plansky's Revenge

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where it ends up. This month, Kate started with a classic, Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, which is about seduction and revenge.

First Degree

I never read the book but I saw the movie with Glenn Close, John Malkovich, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Another book with revenge as the theme that was made into an entertaining movie is The First Wives Club by Olivia Goldsmith (1992) - after their friend commits suicide, three recently divorced women decide they want revenge for her and on their husbands.

Second Degree

Collaborating on revenge is part of The Dinosaur Club by William Heffernan (1997), an old favorite I highly recommend. Jack Fallon’s life is falling apart - he is being downsized and his wife has left him. Mad as hell and not planning to take it anymore, he and his over-50 laid-off colleagues decide to fight back against their employer. This caper novel was both suspenseful and humorous; I kept my copy and will reread it soon.

Third Degree

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (1934) is another example of (spoiler – but hasn’t everyone who wants to already read it?) of how effective revenge can be when carried out by a group.

Fourth Degree

Revenge can be self-destructive. In this delightful Cinderella retelling, A Single Thread of Moonlight by Laura Wood (2023), Iris blames her evil stepmother (in fiction, is there any other kind?) for her father’s death and runs away to London where she reinvents herself (improbably but appealingly). She finds an accomplice, handsome Nicholas Wynter, who has his own secret plans and they return to her childhood home for a showdown. But has Iris blinded herself to what really happened to her father?

Fifth Degree

In These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer (1926), the Duke of Avon rescues a guttersnipe and sees a resemblance to his greatest enemy.

“ . . . he knows that I am still waiting.”

“Waiting . . . ?”

Justin walked to the table and set down his glass.

“For an opportunity to pay that debt in full,” he said softly.

“Vengeance?” Hugh leaned forward. “I thought you disliked melodrama, my friend?”

“I do; but I have a veritable passion for – justice.”

Although he exploits someone innocent to get it, Justin is humanized along the way and earns happiness he probably does not deserve.

Sixth Degree

In contrast to the sometimes-forbidding Duke of Avon, known as Devil to many acquaintances, the eponymous heroine of Mrs. Plansky's Revenge is a warm-hearted widow, overly generous to her adult children and their offspring. When she is scammed out of her entire savings, she is more worried about funding her elderly father than herself. After the FBI tells her the perpetrators of the scheme are likely in Romania but impossible to bring to justice, she gets on a plane and goes after them herself. My review and one of my Best of 2024.

Have you read any of these?  Next month (March 1, 2025), Kate has chosen the 2023 Booker Prize winner, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch.