Six Degrees of Separation: From Rules of Civility to Murder at Melrose Court

It's the first Saturday of the month (and year) and time to play Six Degrees of Separation. This meme is hosted by Kate of Books Are My Favourite and Best. The aim is to link six books to each other from the starting point.

This month the starting point is Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. I haven't read this novel and have relied on the Goodreads' book description for inspiration. The shorter one gave me my first link: paper planes.

In a jazz bar on the last night of 1937, watching a quartet because she couldn't afford to see the whole ensemble, there were certain things Katey Kontent knew. By the end of the year she'd learned - how to launch a paper airplane high over Park Avenue, how to live like a redhead, and how to insist upon the very best.

Steve Worland's novel Paper Planes, adapted from the film of the same name, is about a boy from a small town in Western Australia who has a talent for folding and flying paper planes, and enters the World Junior Paper Plane Championships in Japan. I haven't made a paper plane in ages, not that I was very good at it. Mine usually took a nosedive.

From paper planes to paper chains and A Christmas Garland by Anne Perry, which I recently finished. Set in 1857 India, after the Siege of Cawnpore and a few days before Christmas, Lieutenant Victor Narraway is under orders to defend a soldier against a charge of murder. While contemplating the evidence and how best to present his case, Narraway wanders the British cantonment until invited to share tea with a widow and her children. One of the children gifts Narraway with a blue paper chain which he hangs up in his quarters.

Another seasonal novel is A Christmas Carol Murder by Heather Redmond where Charles Dickens is a young journalist, engaged to be married and is an amateur sleuth. While out Christmas carolling with family and friends, he witnesses the murder of Jacob Harley, business partner to Emmanuel Screws, a miserly and unpopular man. I enjoyed this cosy mystery which includes some biographical facts about Dickens and characters that may have appeared in his famous Christmas novella, albeit under different names.

The word murder in the book title takes me to Cyril Hare's An English Murder, a classic country house murder mystery. An ailing aristocrat gathers together his remaining family and other guests for a final Christmas, but a suspicious death on Christmas Eve spoils the festivities. What I liked about this mystery was the foreign guest, Dr Bottwink, a Hercule Poirot-like character who solves the case, and the butler, Briggs, who does his utmost to uphold standards despite the lack of domestic staff.

I couldn't mention butlers without thinking of Clifford from the charming Lady Eleanor Swift mysteries by Verity Bright set in the early 1920s. This series also feaures a mischievious bulldog called Gladstone.

Another cosy mystery series with a delightful canine and is fun to read is one by Karen Baugh Menuhin. It, too, is set in the early 1920s and features Major Heatchliff Lennox, an ex-World War I pilot; his butler and ex-batman, Greggs; and a spaniel named Mr. Fogg, who dislikes dead bodies of any kind. My links this month have taken me from paper planes to paper chains, seasonal novels, murder in the book title, butlers and dogs, via some very entertaining Christmas cosy mysteries.

Next month (February 5, 2022), the starting point will be No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood.