Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

About Jake

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I love reading! (Learn more about this Cannonballer: Jake's Quick Questions interview.)

Jake's Reviews:

The Ties That Bind

Blood's A Rover by James Ellroy

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The conclusion of James Ellroy’s Underworld USA trilogy is probably not the best work of is but it may be one of my favorites. If you haven’t followed along with my reviews, allow me some framing: I have a weird relationship with James Ellroy’s books. LA noirs and overarching American conspiracy are definitely my thing. But for years, I wasn’t able to connect with Ellroy’s style. Not necessarily his writing style, per se, though that often leaves something to be desired. Rather, Ellroy reads were […]

Eastern Promises

The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell

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I’ve read three Henning Mankell books and each one has left me satisfied, like they are a step above the regular mystery read. I don’t know why I don’t do a deeper dive into his work. Dogs of Riga is another winner and it was inching towards a five-star rating before it fell apart in the last quarter. I’ll get to that. But let me begin by singing the praises of Henning Mankell. In this one, he has his main character spend most of his time […]

Standing Outside a Broken Phonebooth…

Down the River Unto the Sea by Walter Mosley

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This is the first Walter Mosley book I’ve read that didn’t feature his famed detective Easy Rawlins. I liked it, with some reservations. We’re introduced to Joe King Oliver, a former NYPD detective who was framed and now has to make a living as a PI, trawling the streets of New York. Mosley’s Oliver is similar to Rawlins: a man who has been wronged yet has faults of his own. Mosley is quite good at making one feel sympathetic to his male protagonists while also […]

Cowboys Like Us…

The Final Country by James Crumley

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This book inspired the title for the seventh episode of this season’s True Detective. When I finally finished Dave Halberstam’s wonderful-but-exhausting The Best and the Brightest, I decided to pick it up since it was the latest Crumley in my stack. And it might be my favorite. I’ve always liked the Milo books more than the Sughrue ones. There’s really no difference between the two characters; they’re both old, gruff alky war vets who function as ancillaries for the author. But for whatever reason, the three Milo books […]

Male, Pale, and Yale

The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam

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Or Harvard. Or West Point. Texas State. But the point remains: this book is about how liberal elites got us into an imperial war. I don’t know how you write a history text better than this. It has exactly what I look for in its subject’s great works: to be good, thorough, and damning. By the end of reading this, I was relieved to be done but thoroughly exhausted at the week-long endeavor, which I was only able to finish in seven days thanks to […]

Ugh, Dad, You’re Embarrassing Me…

The Way We Die Now by Charles Willeford

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And so I have come to the end of Charles Willeford’s Hank Moseley series which, while at times was quite entertaining, mostly disappointed me after its great entry (Miami Blues). As I said in my reviews of the last two books, I expected more cat-and-mouse affairs with Moseley and criminals. I didn’t think this would be a series about a sad sack cop’s private life with some police bureaucracy and a little detective work thrown in. That’s mostly what these books are. And while I’ve […]



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