Mark had left Cambridge University without completing his degree and had taken a job as a gardener. An Unsuitable Job for a Woman is a Cordelia Gray detective story in which she takes on an assignment from Sir Ronald Callander, a famous scientist, to investigate the death of his son, Mark who had been found hanged in suspicious circumstances. Social Services are asked to work with the police, in order to question Grace and her friend Chloe, a child from a troubled family.Īnother author with the name James, is P D James, also a crime writer. Ten year old Grace is being fostered when her foster mother and her baby are found dead in their beds. Social Services also feature in Fair of Face by Christina James. The victim, a woman had worked in social services – and was involved in a shocking case involving a young child. One of these books is Silent Voicesin which D I Vera Stanhope finds a dead body in the sauna room of her local gym. My next link is a bit of a jump – from the character Brenda in Happenstance I immediately thought of Brenda Blethyn, who plays Vera in Ann Cleeves’s books. They’re printed in the same book in an unusual format of containing two books in one, either can be read first – then turn the book upside down and read the other story. This reminded me of Carol Shields’ book Happenstance, two stories about the same five-day period – one from Jack Bowman’s point of view, and the other from his wife, Brenda’s. I see that there are two versions: one begins with the contemporary story, the other with the 15th-century story. I haven’t read this book but I’d like to sometime.

Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real-and all life’s givens get given a second chance.’ (Goodreads) There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s.

Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it’s a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. ‘How to be Both is a novel all about art’s versatility. This month (April 6, 2019), the chain begins with Ali Smith’s award-winning novel, How to be Both. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. I love doing Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best.

The crime of miss jean brodie