Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Living in the Past

This Storm by James Ellroy

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I met James Ellroy when purchasing this book at a book signing. I was nervous, having heard plenty of stories about his uncouth behavior in public. But he was actually quite nice and gracious with his time. It seems to me that once he rides out his initial wave of anxiety and gets comfortable in a situation, he’s fine. Both of us being Lutheran, we joked about the great Martin Luther; he of course appreciating Luther’s vulgarity towards the Pope. Ellroy makes it clear that […]

eeeugh. gross in so many ways.

The Innocent by Ian McEwan

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TRIGGER WARNING: sexual violence- and other terrible things What started out as a fairly mild story of a man who is a:not good at his job and b: not a terribly interesting person lurched suddenly downhill into a dirge of rape fantasy, sexual violence, murder, and dismemberment. “Eeeugh” was putting it lightly. I’m not one to tell you, dear reader, what to do- but I strongly suggest avoiding this garbage fire. I am normally drawn to post-war drama- especially involving espionage and intrigue- but I […]

The Ratf#%^ers

The Seersucker Whipsaw by Ross Thomas

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Ratf#%^&ing has been in the news a lot the last couple of years because of the Trump/Russia scandal. Outside influence affecting democratic elections is a time honored tradition, and few are more familiar with it than the United States, which has been practicing it for decades. It’s practically the CIA’s métier at this point. It’s a violent, imperialistic practice ripe for skewing. Enter Ross Thomas. This is one of his earlier novels and apparently it’s influenced by his real life adventures in the African political […]

The first Christie book I haven’t liked.

The Big Four (Hercule Poirot, #5) by Agatha Christie

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At first listening to this audiobook, I was enjoying myself quite a bit. Poirot was there, Hastings was there, back from Brazil, and aren’t we all having a good time now that this mysterious man has shown up in the bedroom, and then expired. Except pretty quickly after that, I realized in fact that the book was not good, and I was not enjoying myself, and even though I did listen to the whole thing in its entirety, I did not *listen* to the book […]

A Spy in the Life

The Last Supper by Charles McCarry

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I enjoy Charles McCarry’s Paul Christopher series, a great blend of espionage intrigue and commentary on American foreign affairs. Many consider The Last Supper to be his magnum opus. While I enjoyed parts of the book, I will not be one of those people. The Last Supper is not a conventional Christopher novel in that there’s a case and he’s working it. Instead, it’s kind of a biographical work that traces his father’s life and his own. Throughout it are multiple espionage cases handled by the OSS and […]

Espionage: First as Farce, Then As Tragedy

The Tailor of Panama by John Le Carré

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I have yet to read Graham Greene’s famous spy satire Our Man in Havana, but I’m familiar with the premise and am well aware that John Le Carré is aping it here. He’s having a blast splattering colored paint on the immaculately white walls of British imperialism. Until he remembers that these characters have stories, hearts and lives too. That’s what makes The Tailor of Panama so fascinating. Transparently a satire of western intelligence work, Le Carré also paints vivid portraits of characters whose lives are impacted by […]



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