Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Holy s***,” I breathed, “heckhounds.”

Grave Peril (Dresden Files #3) by Jim Butcher

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I am continuing my Dresden Files journey and so very into it. In fact, I find Jim Butcher to be a perfect fantasy antithesis of my previous read/review, which was the last in the N.K. Jemisin Broken Earth trilogy. Where Jemisin is layered and cerebral, Butcher is spoon-feeding you and a fun romp. In each book of the series, I get hints of the Tru Blood series in that Butcher ploddingly repeats himself with character intros, Harry, tortured wizard Detective; Karrin Murphy tough as nails […]

I Loved Laura, Except for . . .

Laura by Vera Caspary

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Another book from my personal challenge of reading the source material for favorite classic movies: Laura, by Vera Caspary. This book is a detective noir, as hard-boiled and cynical as any of the genre, but written by a woman. It was originally published, a la Dickens, as a serial, “Ring Twice for Laura,” in Colliers Magazine in 1942/43. The  classic film noir, starring Gene Tierney as Laura and Dana Andrews as a detective who finds himself falling in love with a dead woman as he […]

“Why had my life suddenly become a Nancy Drew mystery from hell?”

Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys: The Big Lie by Anthony Del Col

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Review title is a quote from Rachel Hawkins’ Demonglass This book is like comic book fan fiction from my 8th grade brain. But more violent, and less me-as-Bess-kissing-a-cute-Frank-Hardy. Imagine the writers of Riverdale picked a different universe to focus their melodramatic musings on. Imagine that world was the pivotal Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys super mysteries, when it seemed like maybe they were trying to do a Christopher Pike thing? (For the record, The Nancy Drew Files were my favorite version.) But imagine instead of leaning into […]

A Nice, Relaxing Lakehouse Getaway…Just Kidding!

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The Lady in the Lake, Chandler’s fourth Philip Marlowe novel, gets the private eye out of 1940s Los Angeles and into the California countryside. You would think the hard-boiled detective is just looking for a little TLC after all the murders and blackjacks to the skull, but that’s not his style. Just look at the title! Trouble seems to follow Marlowe like a hangover fart.  This is a different kind of Marlowe novel, in my opinion. The previous books featured a more sardonic, cosmopolitan, up-for-anything […]

Even though someone else said it better

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I saw a Goodreads description or review that called Cantero the heir to the Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams throne. Nope to that. The more I think on it, the more I like This Body’s Not Big Enough For Both Of Us, but it’s not the same level of clever, especially since it’s much more limited in the scope of the allusions. The wordplay of Pratchett is not there, nor is the narrative originality, or at least not original in the same way. Cantero’s pretty direct […]

Honeycombed by Grifters at City Hall down to the Flatfeet on the Beat

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Alan Hynd was a prolific writer of “fictionalized true crime” stories for the True Crime magazine.  Which means he took real cases and created dialogue and filled in the blanks to form a complete story.   While the magazines are hard to find,  his son Noel has compiled some of his dad’s work into anthologies, of which this is the first volume. The introduction is so sweet.  Noel’s love for his dad and his dad’s writing is evident from the start and his genuine fandom […]



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