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:

Persistence of Time

The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey

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It’s official: I like Josephine Tey. It’s also official: I am not a fan of the classic British mystery novel. Josephine Tey is yet another writer I’ve been meaning to come back to for a long time. I finished The Daughter of Time in one day, two separate sittings. The premise was simple but the execution took my breath away. I gave myself a headache straining to read from page-to-page. The Franchise Affair is a slightly more conventional mystery albeit with an interesting twist: a young girl claims to […]

The Ratf#%^ers

The Seersucker Whipsaw by Ross Thomas

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Ratf#%^&ing has been in the news a lot the last couple of years because of the Trump/Russia scandal. Outside influence affecting democratic elections is a time honored tradition, and few are more familiar with it than the United States, which has been practicing it for decades. It’s practically the CIA’s métier at this point. It’s a violent, imperialistic practice ripe for skewing. Enter Ross Thomas. This is one of his earlier novels and apparently it’s influenced by his real life adventures in the African political […]

Nightmares and Dreamscapes

Cinnamon Kiss by Walter Mosley

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Dreams have always featured heavily in Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins series. But this one in particular had a lot of dream sequences and descriptions of dreams. It kind of wore on me after awhile; I felt like Mosley was trying to stuff extra scenes to raise his page count since the plot was so thin. I don’t know what it’s like dealing with publishers but note to writers: if you can get away with a good story in 190 or 220 pages, it’s cool. I […]

Existential Dread Served With Your Crime Fiction

The Thief by Fuminori Nakamura

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I didn’t love The Thief but it’s one that will definitely stay with me. It’s not my typical tale: a story about an almost nameless career petty thief heisting wallets that shifts between the past and the present. In the past, he did a controversial job for some heavy hitter criminals in Japanese society and now he’s on the run. In the present, he’s done running and is getting by with thieving when he meets a poor boy and his mother, the former of whom he takes […]

Roadtrippin’

Bordersnakes by James Crumley

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James Crumley made his bones with his novel The Last Good Kiss. In between the publication of that and the publication of this, he wrote one Milo and one Shugrue book respectively over the course of 18 years. Aside from a short story collection, that’s it. I don’t know Crumley’s deal; I’ve only read a couple of interviews he’s done but my guess is he caught lightening in a bottle with TLGK and knew he couldn’t write it again, though he wanted to. He must’ve gotten to a point […]

Mindfreak Mystery

Bangkok Haunts by John Burdett

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First things first: all my caveats about this series from my review of Bangkok Tattoo still apply (book is written as the perspective of an easterner by a westerner). Everything in this series needs to be taken with that grain of salt. Still…wow. This book messed with my mind. In each of these tales, Burdett reaches for a complex plot, weaving in Buddhist theology and observations about life in Thailand and the eastern Pacific rim in general. Here, you could see a writer who is completely comfortable […]



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