Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“This, I thought, was how the real power-play went: conversations in corners and gardens, nods, shrugs, inclinations of the head. But nothing in writing.”

Lamentation: A Matthew Shardlake Tudor Mystery by C.J. Sansom

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It’s been a year since Heartstone, and Matthew Shardlake’s life is going reasonably well. He has a new steward, a new Law clerk, and Jack and Tamasin are soon to welcome their second child. True, he hasn’t seen Queen Katherine Parr in that time, the religious needle has swung slightly more to the “punishing Protestants” side meaning he’s going to have to burn some of his favorite books, and he has to represent Lincoln’s Court at the burning of Anne Askew for heresy, but that’s […]

The Thiefs

Old Black Magic by Ace Atkins

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Read as part of CBR17 Bingo: starts with O I have heard from many living old school mystery writers that the modern PI mystery tales in the States can be traced back to Spenser. Having gone out of vogue with the deaths of Chandler and Hammett — and with only Ross Macdonald elevating the genre — the hardboiled PI tale had taken a back seat by the time Robert B. Parker began building his prodigious catalog in the early-70s. Which is why I’ve given more […]

Quite a Grab Bag

Waiting for the Fear by Oguz Atay

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cbr17bingo Black A collection of stories from an unusual author, a Turkish writer who lived from 1934 to 1977.  Some of them are fables, some are mystical, and a few are more realistic.  For me, some resonated, and some were impenetrable.  And a few had a sly sense of humor. Like Not Yes Not No, which cracked me up.  A young man gets a job answering letters to a paper asking for personal advice (think Dear Abby).  M.C. writes in to state he has written […]

What do you call a family of Richards? A bag of Dicks.

No Body No Crime by Tess Sharpe

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Tess Sharpe’s No Body No Crime isn’t based on Taylor Swift’s “No Body No Crime,” but it’s a good song to have on the playlist while reading. There’s plenty of atmosphere here, but the book is more explosive than atmospheric. The violence piles up quickly, and so do the bodies and the missing people. This was such a fun read. I can’t talk much about what happens, because the fun is in discovering for yourself how a missing woman, a plane crash, and a car […]

When your abandoned lighthouse is not so abandoned after all

The Ghost of Wreckers Cove by Angelica Del Campo, Christian Argiz and Liniers

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Cbr17bingo G (G is for Ghost) When I find a book from Papercutz I usually have an extreme I really like this or I really don’t. Now, granted The Ghost of Wreckers Cove by Angelica Del Campo, Christian Argiz and Liniers (illustrator) had a few bumps as I am an adult reader who has to remember sometimes you need to suspend your “reality need” for the sake of a good story.  I was debating if I wanted to read this graphic novel as it looked […]

The written car wreck

In the End We All Die: A Graphic Novel by Tobias Aeschbacher

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cbr17bingo I (I is for IN THE END) The cover image I do not believe is in In the End We All Die: A Graphic Novel by Tobias Aeschbacher, but honestly I am not completely sure because I was trying to figure out the cast of characters. These sad, lonely, pathetic, pitiful, hopeless, petty, wretched individuals are made up of tails, snails, and mud. On the surface they might look okay, but two of them (a male and female couple) rob food trucks, three men […]



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