Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Every Last Fear, and the People Affected by True Crime Entertainment

Every Last Fear by Alex Finlay

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This is the entry for the “Free!” square in bingo. I borrowed it 🙂 This was a really fun book to read. Horribly depressing subject matter, but there were some twists and turns. I won’t say the mystery is impenetrable as it becomes fairly clear about halfway through, but the way the events unfold is very interesting.  Matt Pine is a student at NYU who is dealing with the aftermath of a true crime documentary about his brother, Danny Pine, and the murder of Danny’s […]

Hell Hath Fury

Razorblade Tears by S.A. Crosby

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CN: violence against LGBTQIA+ folk Confession time: It’s been kind of a disappointing year for me in terms of reading fiction. There’s little that moves me anymore; everything feels so rote. That has little to do with contemporary writers, who are constantly twisting their genres, and more with just a continued familiarity with the tropes. Crime writing that used to entertain me when it reached the level of competent now barely moves the needle. And then, there’s S.A. Crosby. I enjoyed Blacktop Wasteland when it came out […]

Double Cannonballing with a good series-ender.

Subtle Blood (The Will Darling Adventures, #3) by K.J. Charles

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**30 Books in 30 Days** Book 23/30 To be honest, I think if (when) I read all three books in this series back to back in the future, I will bump up both books two and three from four to five stars. It has been top notch in all areas: romance, class examinations, mysteries, historical fiction set in the 1920s, books about friendship, books about secret agents and spies, suspense novels. Seriously, just in all the things this series sets out to do, it succeeds […]

Drawing the Joker

Lady Joker, Volume One by Kaoru Takamura

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Japanese crime stories are often large in scope. They focus on the characters more or less but the writers like to take a broader look at Japanese society. At least, that’s been my experience with the crime fiction that’s been translated state side. Hideo Yokoyama and Natsuo Kirino immediately come to mind. Kaoru Takamura writes in a similar vein. This work was compared to both James Ellroy and Don DeLillo. I didn’t see either, frankly. Although Kaoru Takamura does do the cultural critiquing in the […]

Cannonballing with Agatha.

4:50 from Paddington (Miss Marple, #7) by Agatha Christie

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I had a very good time with this one. Especially the beginning and ending. (The middle did get a bit squidgy.) The premise of this one has Miss Marple in it from the beginning, which is always nice, but even when that happens, she still takes a backseat in her own books. This time, it’s because she says she’s too old now to do her own footwork, so she enlists the services of Miss Lucy Eyelesbarrow to help her search for a body. The set […]

“You get used to marvelous things. You take them for granted. You can try not to, but you do. There’s too much wonder, that’s all. It’s everywhere.”

Later by Stephen King

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I really had a good time with this one. I finished it over two months ago now, but unlike my experience with Eternals, I remember it vividly and fondly. I just have one tiny beef with it, and it’s a beef I’ve recently had with King before, but more on that later. Jamie Conklin is our narrator, a kid who can see dead people (King wisely acknowledges the Haley Joel Osment shaped elephant in the room). It’s a talent he (and his mom) have mostly […]



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