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:

No They Sure Can’t

Burglars Can't Be Choosers by Lawrence Block

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I’ve been on a bit of a Lawrence Block kick recently. I’ve come to love the Matthew Scudder series and I like Block’s style of writing, as well as his frequent New York City setting. In reading an interview of Block, he mentioned how many people either liked his burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr series and didn’t like the Scudder ones because the latter is too dark, or didn’t like the former because it’s too light or because it glorifies a criminal. I figured it was time […]

Anchors Away

Home Is The Sailor by Day Keene

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Christa Faust is one of my favorite writers and I came to her work via Hard Case Crime. In an interview with her, I read that she got started on crime fiction by reading Day Keene. I wasn’t too familiar with Keene but I knew I had his Home Is The Sailor book in my HCC collection. It was low on my priority list but it shot up after the interview and now, I figured it was time to get to it. It’s your typical pulp fare […]

Night Owls

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

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Years ago, I worked a late night shift at a security desk. The human body is simply not built for such work. Try as I might, I never really adjusted. I kept hearing noises and thinking there was a looming presence nearby. I gave my ghosts names. I learned to lean into the creepiness, even though I thought disaster was looming at every turn. It’s the typical paranoia induced by a lack of sleep and company. Night shift fiction often takes me back to those […]

Leaving it all on the field

The Terrorists by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

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Is this it? Really it? All I get from the Martin Beck series? Damn. What great books these are. They’ve ruined the police procedural for me forever. When I first sat down to read Roseanna about five years ago, I would have never guessed this would become one of my favorite book series of all time. I found it to be a drab, uninspiring procedural novel. Fun if you like reading about shoe leather detective work but otherwise nothing special. And then someone turned me on to […]

Houston Has a Problem

Sunset City by Melissa Ginsburg

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I read Megan Abbott’s supportive blurb on the back of this book before I started it. By the end, I wish Megan Abbott had written it. It’s a familiar premise but tailor made for her gifts. Melissa Ginsburg’s not a bad writer by any means. She really makes the city of Houston come alive: the sprawling highways, inexplicable traffic, bottomless amount of dive bars, sense of change while rooted in the familiar. But I had a hard time getting into this one, short as it […]

Ain’t No Love In the Heart of the City

Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by Walter Mosley

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Whew. I don’t even really know where to begin with this one. Not because it’s a complex book. On the surface, it’s rather simple: 14 tales of an ex-con trying to make it in the underbelly of south central Los Angeles. No more, no less. No central plot except a man trying to survive. But hell, man, this is a tale of living. James Weldon Johnson once wrote in a poem: “Make me a world.” Walter Mosley does that. I’ve had an interesting journey with […]



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