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 Chicago Way

Scarface and the Untouchable: Al Capone, Eliot Ness, and the Battle for Chicago by Max Alan Collins

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I’ve been waiting for this book for years. There are so many works out there about Al Capone, most of them more fact than fiction, few of them recounting the gritty details of his battles with Eliot Ness during Prohibition. The Untouchables movie is more fantasy than reality, so was the TV show, depicting a Manicheean struggle between good and evil, law and order, etc. I wanted something that covered the full details of how these two met on the playing field of Chicago and what actually […]

Poirot Knows

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

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From time-to-time, I like to read a random Agatha Christie. As perhaps the greatest whodunnit writer of all-time, Christie keeps me sharp as a writer, even if I’m not especially a fan of whodunnits. I grabbed this one randomly from my local library, assuming that at any moment, my state will have a stay-at-home order and I’ll have to hunker down again with books. That hasn’t happened…yet. But when I had space over the weekend to get to this one, I was excited to do […]

International Woman of Mystery

The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian

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This book is a perfect example of why I don’t often read page-ripping thrillers. It has some great highs and lows, but the former outweighed the latter and that was enough to bump it to 4 stars. I don’t often read thrillers because they don’t have great character development. This one does. I felt invested in Cassandra’s plight, even as she was making terrible decisions. I don’t often read thrillers because they don’t plot themselves well. This one does. Chris Bohjalian spreads out the bread […]

Man of La Mafia

The Kiss Off by Jim Cirni

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The downside to having an abundance of READ THIS listicles on the internet is that sometimes, books slip through the cracks. Rarely do I go into a library or bookstore without knowing exactly what I’m looking for. Sure, in the pre-Covid era, I could spend hours browsing but when it came time to check out, I’d usually go with what I know I wanted. There was a time when my shelves were just stacked with books I know I would never read and I’m seriously […]

She Used to Meet Me on the (Lower) East Side

The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe

Lush Life by Richard Price

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Read two consecutive books whose geographies bumped up against each other; one set in Manhattan’s Chinatown, the other set partially in it, as well as the adjacent East Village. Both were excellent in their own respective ways. The Snakehead How is Patrick Radden Keefe so damn good at writing non-fiction? This doesn’t reach the heights of Say Nothing (really what can?) but it’s a fascinating story in its own right and Keefe tells it well and thoroughly, providing enough detail without larding the narrative. He also takes […]

A Mother-Daughter Thing

The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers by Bridgett M. Davis

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I found this book on a list of unusual true crime reads. I suppose on some level this can be classified as a “true crime” book. Illegal gambling is a crime and I guess Fannie Davis was technically a criminal if you’re going by the letter of the law. But this is really more than that. It’s a story about a daughter’s relationship with her mother, how it evolved over the years, how her mother embraced her unusual profession and used it to make a […]



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