Six Degrees of Separation: Rodham to Life or Death

Hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavouriteandbest, on the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form Six Degrees of Separation. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

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I had no idea where to go with Rodham since it’s unlike anything I choose to read, then, when on Goodreads I decided to page through the ‘Readers Also Enjoy’ feature of the book page, and found something I’d actually read, so let’s start there.

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I doubt Please See Us by Caitlin Mullen actually has anything in common with Rodham. Set in Atlantic City, it’s a dark, gritty story of two young women drawn into the orbit of a serial killer.

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Caitlin Doughty also writes about death, but she blends the tales of her experiences as a crematory operator, and later as a licensed mortician, with a brief historical, cultural and philosophical overview of death rituals, in Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.

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In contrast, in Drink, Smoke, Pass Out, Australian comedienne Judith Lucy writes about life, recounting her journey from hard drinking youth to a more moderate middle age as her rekindled interest in spirituality vies with her deeply ingrained cynicism.

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Lucy is the name of a supporting character in Hermit, a debut novel from S.R. White. Set in rural Australia, most of the action in Hermit takes place within a police interrogation room as Detective Dana Russo carefully coaxes information from a psychologically frail murder suspect. It results in a series of tense and unusual exchanges between the two as a tentative rapport develops, despite their nominally adversarial relationship.

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Australian bank robbers, Ray Denning and Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox were no strangers to the inside of a police interrogation room. In the fascinating and unexpectedly entertaining true crime book, Public Enemies, author Mark Dapin explores the lives of these anti-heroes, from childhood through to adulthood.

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International bestselling author Michael Robotham was a cadet journalist covering the night shift when he received a call from Ray Denning, who had escaped prison and was on the run. I have to wonder if his stand alone novel, Life or Death, about a prison escapee, may have been inspired in part by his connection with the notorious criminal.

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Next month the Six Degrees of Separation meme will begin with