Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Deep in the Heart of Texas

Savage Season by Joe R. Lansdale

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Read as part of CBR11 bingo: First in the Hap and Leonard series. Joe R. Lansdale is one of those writers I’ve always been meaning to get to but never had the time for. His bibliography, while prolific, is not as readily available at the used bookstores I enjoy perusing, nor are many of them at my local library (I had to buy this copy from The Mysterious Bookshop). And when I did try one of his popular ones, The Bottoms, I found it to be […]

Consider my Pot, Boiled

A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djèlí Clark

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark

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It started with John Constantine, grouchy creepy detective magician, solving petty punk mysteries and sassing demons.  I love a good pot boiler, but I like them with wizards, or gods, or most preferably ghosts.  My collection is an embarrassment of sassy magicians solving ghost crimes. An anonymous Twitter surfaced in my feed one day to recommend the short story A Dead Djinn in Cairo. Special Investigator Fatma el-Sha’arawi of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities must investigate the potential suicide of powerful djinn […]

Horrifying and sadly not surprising

Billion Dollar Whale by Tom Write & Bradley Hope

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It boggles my mind that people can get away with swindling banks and governments and other institutions to essentially steal millions of dollars. It boggles my mind that our president seems to be one of those people. But this book focuses in on Malaysia and a low life high profile scammer named Jho Low. This book is basically the dark mirror flip version of Crazy Rich Asians. Instead of feeling awed and entertained, prepare to feel queasy and disgusted if you pick this book up. […]

Psycho Killer, Qu’est-ce que c’est?

In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes

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Dorothy B. Hughes was a popular crime writer of the 1940s and 1950s, perhaps the best female crime writer of her day and, based on the prose and psychological complexity on display in this slim volume, very much the equal of her better-known male peers. A very perceptive afterword written by the mystery novelist Megan Abbot does a better job elucidating the feminist aspects of the book than I could hope to, so let me just say that In A Lonely Place is a necessary […]

A Quick Little Walk on the Dark Side

The Best American Mystery Stories 2018 by Louise Penny (editor)

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I’m going to say that while I did like this collection, I don’t necessarily know that I personally would have called all the included stories “mystery” stories. A lot of them fell into more of a ‘suspense’ or general ‘crime’ genres rather than a true mystery story. That didn’t bother me most of the time, but it was enough of a thing that I wanted to get it out there for anyone who may want to check this one out. As with most short story […]

Zombie

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

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When Dolores O’Riordan of the Cranberries died, some people said “Dreams” or “Linger” was the band’s best song. But for many people, myself include, it was “Zombie”, the song about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It isn’t that the U2 songs about it are bad – “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” is powerful – but “Zombie” is so rare that powerful doesn’t even begin to describe it. It is the sense of horrible lose and pain. And you can’t help but think of that song why reading […]



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