Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

All the good things about her had to be taken away, too.

Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter

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My stay at home obsession with the My Favorite Murder podcast led me to this title. Not something that I would generally read, but Georgia Hardstark’s ringing endorsement nudged me to give it a try. Not sure that it was really my bag, but I can see the appeal for some true crime fiends. Over two decades after their older sister’s disappearance, her two estranged siblings find themselves confronting the trauma of their childhood all over again. The youngest sister, Claire, is living a privileged life of […]

Man of La Mafia

The Kiss Off by Jim Cirni

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The downside to having an abundance of READ THIS listicles on the internet is that sometimes, books slip through the cracks. Rarely do I go into a library or bookstore without knowing exactly what I’m looking for. Sure, in the pre-Covid era, I could spend hours browsing but when it came time to check out, I’d usually go with what I know I wanted. There was a time when my shelves were just stacked with books I know I would never read and I’m seriously […]

She Used to Meet Me on the (Lower) East Side

The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream by Patrick Radden Keefe

Lush Life by Richard Price

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Read two consecutive books whose geographies bumped up against each other; one set in Manhattan’s Chinatown, the other set partially in it, as well as the adjacent East Village. Both were excellent in their own respective ways. The Snakehead How is Patrick Radden Keefe so damn good at writing non-fiction? This doesn’t reach the heights of Say Nothing (really what can?) but it’s a fascinating story in its own right and Keefe tells it well and thoroughly, providing enough detail without larding the narrative. He also takes […]

Devil’s Night

Blood Sugar by Daniel Kraus

The Crow by James O'Barr

The Transgressors by Jim Thompson

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Happy Halloween! Preceding this Devil’s Night, I had a full day off and caught up on a lot of reading. It was a relief to get these three off the TBR list. All were good in their own respective ways. Blood Sugar 3 stars “A” for effort on the language, which is written in the slang of what Daniel Kraus thinks is a modern day teenager. I found it too distracting. But much like Nico Walker’s Cherry, when I was able to get used to it, […]

Big, stinky dog living under porch with a suitcase full of $400k and explosives.

The Drifter (Peter Ash, #1) by Nicholas Petrie

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This book was a gift I got from the CBR Book Exchange a couple years ago (thanks again, Jenny S!), and I just never got around to reading it because crime thrillers with hyper-masculine main characters and lots of shoot-’em up violence aren’t really my thing. I’m glad I gave it a shot, because although this book fits comfortably in that genre, I found the lead character Peter Ash, a veteran of the US Marine Corps, to be sensitively portrayed, and the plot itself had […]

Best Buds

A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself by William Boyle

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My William Boyle journey has been an interesting one. I’ve tried to read Gravesend three separate times with no success. They have the feel of those George Pelecanos style character-driven crime tales that I feel like I should enjoy more than I do, in part because the writer is too close to their home territory to let the story breathe. At the beginning of the pandemic, I finally sat down and finished The Lonely Witness, which I found to be fine but lacking, aside from a great protagonist. […]



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