Six Degrees of Separation – from The Horse and His Boy to Ten Little Indians

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’s starting point is a wildcard, the book with which we finished December’s chain – mine was The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis.

First Degree

I haven’t read the book below because it sounds absurd and isn’t coming out until spring anyway; however, I did recommend it today to someone I thought would like it:

The Inklings Detective Agency by John R. Kelly. Here is the description:

J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Agatha Christie, and other literary legends join forces to unravel a deadly conspiracy in this gripping mystery that sweeps from the halls of Oxford to the streets of London and the shores of Loch Ness.

I mean, seriously? I have read that Tolkien and Lewis both had a sense of humor – I wonder if they would find this amusing or offensive.  It's very trendy to feature real people as sleuths but it is not what I am looking for in a mystery.  I'm trying to think of one that worked . . .

Second Degree

One of Lewis’s Inkling friends was George MacDonald, who wrote The Princess and the Goblin (1871), a fantasy in which eight-year-old Princess Irene’s kingdom is threatened by goblins. I found his books somewhat babyish compared to the Narnia books.

Third Degree

There are some great goblins in a book I love by Marian Cockrell but I’ve already used it, so instead I will choose one she wrote with her husband, Dark Waters (1944), a gothic set on a Louisiana plantation about a young woman afraid she is going insane. I was just thinking about it because my friend Laura recently saw the movie, starring Merle Oberon, and reviewed it on her blog.

Fourth Degree

A classic historical novel set on a Louisiana plantation is Deep Summer by Gwen Bristow (1937). Fifteen-year-old Judith is swept off her feet by a handsome young adventurer in the first book of this bestselling trilogy.

Fifth Degree

Gwen Bristow and her husband wrote a mystery called The Invisible Host (1930) in which eight people are invited to a deserted, fancy New Orleans penthouse by an anonymous invitation. After dinner, the guests are told they locked in and are all going to die that night.  Dean Street Press reprinted it recently.

Sixth Degree

Some say that Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians (1939) uses a very similar plot but it is considered unlikely she read the Bristows' book or saw the film, which was called The Ninth Guest.

So I connected C.S. Lewis’ The Horse and His Boy to Agatha Christie – according to Mr. Joseph R. Kelly of an academic institution in New Jersey I've never heard of, Clive and Agatha are out solving mysteries together so I suppose this works!  

Next month (February 7, 2026), the starting point is Flashlight by Susan Choi.