Six Degrees of Separation - from Knife to The Witch of Blackbird Pond

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 Salman Rushdie’s memoir, Knife.

First Degree

The attack on Rushdie in 2022 was horrific but I am not planning to read about it. Absorbing the newspapers every day is scary enough and I prefer my reading to be escapist. In that vein, I just read Knife Skills for Beginners by Orlando Murrin (2004), which is set in a cooking school in a London mansion. 

March 2025 Reading

My favorite books this month were The Lost Passenger, which is much more than a Titanic story, a reread of The Heart Speaks Many Ways, and Just for the Summer, a contemporary romance set in Minnesota. I appreciated Prophet Song, the 2023 Booker winner, and its depiction of an authoritarian state but it was hard to enjoy something so much like our daily life and worries.

The Dark Hours by Amy Jordan - a debut thriller set in Cork

In this debut, a retired detective is forced to revisit her most traumatic case when two young women are killed in eerily similar circumstances. Retired Garda Julia Harte lives modestly in a secluded Irish village with her dog, trying not to think about the murderer who destroyed her life back in 1994.  Even when she learns he died in prison, Julia cannot relax and she is startled to get a call from her one-time chief superintendent, Des Riordan. He asks her to return to Cork to help with the new investigation, in case it is a copycat crime.

Lonesome Road by Patricia Wentworth - Miss Silver's third appearance

The third book about governess-turned-sleuth Miss Silver begins, as several do, with an individual who is nervous about seeking help; she hesitates at the very ordinary Montague Mansions building and regrets having come, yet musters her wits to continue and is encouraged by Miss Silver’s quiet confidence to share hitherto secret worries.

The Heart Speaks Many Ways by Madeleine A. Polland – Reading Ireland Month 2025

In this coming of age story, with an admittedly sappy title, a lovely young woman learns to have confidence in herself and her decision-making rather than reacting to stronger personalities or tragedy.

Emily McRoss has been living in Spain for two years, being “finished” with family friends, Don Rafael and Dona Serafina, and their daughter Remedios, her own age. In the background of the relaxed life of the upper classes in Andalusia there is increasing unrest that will result in civil war.

A Game of Lies by Clare Mackintosh – Reading Wales 2025

A Game of Lies, a sequel to The Last Party, also takes place on the Wales/England border, reuniting the detectives from the previous book, Ffion (pronounced Fee-on) Morgan and Leo Brady. A reality show is being filmed in North Wales, which recruited contestants for a survival experience, promising £10,00 for participating and £100,000 for the winner. 

But Miles Young, the producer, had something else in mind when he called the show, Exposure: he has researched the applicants, chose those who harbor a dark secret, and plans to expose them on the air, one by one, to create huge ratings.

Two Cozy Mysteries

A Brush With Death by Elizabeth J. Duncan
Minotaur Books, 2010

Penny Brannigan is a Canadian in her 50s who settled in the Welsh town of Llanelen years ago where she has made friends and started her own manicure business (there's a first!). In the previous book, The Cold Light of Morning, Penny helped solve a mystery with Detective Inspector Gareth Davies, now her beau. Now, Penny has achieved every reader’s dream – inheriting a rustic cottage with its own mystery!

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch – Reading Ireland Month 2025

After Eilish Stack answers the door one night to find two policemen asking for her husband, she slowly begins to realize nothing will be the same for her family. Her husband’s job seems innocuous – he is an administrator for the Teachers’ Union of Ireland but these men are investigating an allegation against him: