Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Holiday Reads: Alsatian Edition

Mortal Causes (Inspector Rebus #6) by Ian Rankin

Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators by Ronan Farrow

Perfect Silence (DI Callanach #4) by Helen Fields

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Vacationing with young children is hard work, people, even if you’re on a campsite that has not one, but two trampolines (“mum, see what I can do!”). Nevertheless I managed to sneak in a couple of books as I hung about in the (beautiful and very hot) Alsatian countryside, so here goes.  Mortal Causes (Ian Rankin) *** Mortal Causes is Inspector Rebus book no. 6 and though I’ve read the previous five, I had to look that up. I also forgot what it was about […]

Snoozefest

Sleepyhead by Mark Billingham

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A serial killer stalks the streets of London. He approaches women, out alone at night, charms them and plies them with champagne laced with sedatives; when they’re out, he applies a technique to induce a stroke. Most women do not survive, but the ones that do are trapped in a nightmare: their brains are fully functional, but they cannot move. Inspector Tom Thorne is tasked with finding the killer. He has his own idea about who is behind the grisly attacks, but his superiors beg […]

Prairie Dress on top, Miniskirt at the bottom

What's Done in Darkness by Laura McHugh

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Eighteen year old Sarabeth lives with her parents on a remote Arkansas farm. Her family has joined a Christian cult not too long before and Sarabeth, who misses her old life,  rebels against the strict rules imposed upon her. After her parents try to arrange for her to be married to an older man, she contemplates running away. Fate intervenes, though; while selling produce, a stranger takes her away and locks her in his basement. A week later, she is found by the roadside with […]

“You can check-out any time you like/But you can never leave!”

Hotel California by Don Bruns, Heather Graham, Andrew Child, John Gilstrap, Reed Farrel Coleman, Amanda Flower, Jennifer Dornbush, Rick Bleiweiss

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In this anthology of eight crime stories, the reader is introduced to a quite wide cast that includes multiple hitmen and detectives, a senator, an influencer – and a whole bunch of victims. I don’t read many anthologies, but I do make an exception for ones consisting of crime stories. I think the mystery genre is one of the most diverse when it comes to the way authors explore its common tropes. Hotel California‘s central theme is that each story is inspired by a song […]

Narcos

The Cartel by Don Winslow

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Years ago, I read Robert Andrew Powell’s This Love Is Not For Cowards. Powell, a US journalist moved to Juarez, Mexico at the time when it was the most dangerous metropolitan area on earth. He did it to follow the local football (soccer) team, learn about its fan culture and what it meant to be so devout to a team while existing in a war zone. A scene from that book has stuck with me almost ten years since I read it. Powell reports on a shooting […]

double dipping with Rivers of London and River Cartwright

Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aronovitch

Slow Horses by Mick Herron

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Once again, I am unhappy because I am all caught up in the Rivers of London universe. BUT- I thoroughly enjoyed this entry, and I was lucky enough to be able to dive right in to another irreverent British crime series! Amongst Our Weapons, the latest from Ben Aaronovitch, is a return to form. After the strange (but not entirely off-putting) Douglas Adams worship of False Value we have returned to the archaic and architectural weirdness of the rest of the Rivers of London series. It has […]



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