Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Three For When It Happens Here

Spook Street by Mick Herron

Guide Me Home by Attica Locke

The Order by Daniel Silva

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Like a lot of folks in the ten days since the election, I’ve perhaps been slow to process the news. This has impacted my reading. Whereas I’m usually a speed reader, I have found myself often putting off my reading to do some mindless activities. Dealing with reality can be tough, the uncertainty of what comes after the next two months are over is difficult to grapple with. Inadvertently, the three books I’ve read from immediately before the election into the ten days since have […]

Ghostbuster

Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke

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On the surface, Attica Locke is not reinventing the proverbial cop mystery wheel with her Highway 59 series. Her protagonist is a lone wolf who drinks too much, meddles in other affairs, has woman and family troubles, doesn’t get along with the brass, plays by his own rules, and is a byproduct of the local culture, which he simultaneously loves and loathes. The difference between these and most other white-written bestselling cliched mystery series is that main character Texas Ranger Darren Matthews is black, and […]

Darren, Texas Ranger

Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke

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Black writers, like all black people, are not defined solely by being oppressed. The majority of black fiction writers will write about how they deal with racism because it is an every day reality in their lives but it is not the only reality. Attica Locke’s fiction exemplifies this. Darren Mathews, the star of what appears to be the first in a series from Locke, is a complicated man. You empathize for him to a degree because of what he has to endure as a […]

It was way past five o’clock now, the sky told him.

Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke

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This is the second book in the newer series by Attica Locke about a Texas Ranger in the contemporary who is working on a special task focused on the Aryan Brotherhood. The book has a central mystery to it about the missing son of an imprisoned Aryan Brotherhood member, along side the continuing fallout from the first book also involving the murder/death/self-defense against another member in our narrator is embroiled. You would be missing the quality of the first book by jumping to this second […]

Definitely My Wheelhouse

Black Water Rising by Attica Locke

Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke

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As a reader of mysteries, I’ve always been a fan of the more hardboiled variety and especially those with a strong sense of place—George Pelecanos writing about Washington D.C., Dennis Lehane writing about Boston, James Lee Burke writing about Louisiana, and most recently, Craig Johnson writing about Absaroka County (not a real county) in Wyoming.  Well, now I can add Attica Locke to this list. Her focus is East Texas and her novels are rich and complex, featuring flawed protagonists, who find themselves in tricky […]

Big City, Bad Dreams

Black Water Rising by Attica Locke

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Regarding the culture we consume, all of us have books, movies, albums, etc. that we keep meaning to get to, and want to get to, but put off for various reasons. Other things attract our attention or we make excuses or whatever. And when you inevitably get around to what you’ve been putting off, nine times out of ten you’ll wonder why you did. All that to say, I’ve put off on reading Attica Locke’s work for far too long. I made excuses too. I didn’t even […]



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