Books Spotlight: “Six Degrees of Death” and “Loners” by Marian Exall

A little bit about Author Marian Exall and her writing background…

I came to writing fairly late in life after a career as a lawyer. I was born and educated in the UK, lived in France and Belgium, then moved to Atlanta, GA, where I raised a family. In 2006, children grown and gone, we moved to the Pacific Northwest, and I devoted myself to writing. I self-published the Sarah McKinney mystery series, and my short stories were included in anthologies. In February 2024, the Wild Rose Press published my World War II historical fiction, Daughters of Riga, the subject of an earlier Literal Literary Author Feature.

Inspiration to write Six Degrees of Death and Loners, and what can readers expect from these books?

Six Degrees of Death (released November 2024) and Loners (released October 2025) were both written in the three-year period between finishing Daughters of Riga and its publication. I have always loved the mystery genre as a reader, and I learned my writing craft on it. The two novels share a setting: a college town on the Puget Sound, not unlike my hometown Bellingham, and a wintry season. But the characters are different in each. Six Degrees of Death is based on the six degrees of separation theory: six strangers are connected by the suspicious death of a beloved English professor. Lonersfeatures a hardheaded detective Christine McQuarry who refuses to believe a dead woman—her look-alike—committed suicide.

The suspicious death of a much-loved English professor in a small Northwest college town connects six strangers. Is one of them the killer? “It’s always the husband,” declares the jaded detective in charge, but a rookie cop isn’t so sure. When the police investigation hits a wall, the former strangers come together to uncover unlikely links between the professor’s death, Central American political corruption, and a secret document that names the criminals. Now they are all in danger, as an assassin seeks to eliminate any witnesses.

One of Marian’s favourite scenes from Six Degrees of Death…

“Thomas sat at his computer in the spare bedroom now converted to his study. He stared unfocused at the screen. The police visit had shaken him. How did they know about his fight with Geraldine on the morning of her death? He had been on the point of telling them that fighting with Geraldine was a routine occurrence when he realized how that would sound. He’d managed to get rid of them, but what now?  It’s always the husband. He’d gathered that much from his viewing of TV crime dramas.”

Detective Christine McQarry refuses to believe the dead woman—her body double—committed suicide despite the Medical Examiner’s report. Christine is a loner who cares more about the truth than playing well with others. Her obsession with investigating the death frustrates the Medical Examiner, alienates her colleagues, and plunges her into a dark emotional place. Even after her erratic behavior leads to her suspension from the police department, she persists in digging deeper to uncover a secret history that links the deceased to a criminal organization.

One of Marian’s favourite scenes from Loners…

“I remembered Ruth Romano regretting that she hadn’t been a better friend to Victoria. “We always say that when it’s too late,” she’d said. Maybe, having unconsciously identified with a woman my age who looked like me, my efforts to find meaning in her death—to rehabilitate her in some way—echoed Ruth’s wish that she had tried harder. My insistence in coming to Philadelphia perhaps said more about me than it did about Victoria Hartman.

So was I crazy?”