Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“There are so many ways to tell it, and all of them are important. But each way paints a very different picture and leads down a different road.”

Lay Them to Rest: On the Road with the Cold Case Investigators Who Identify the Nameless by Laurah Norton

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Like many of my millennial siblings I partake in quite a bit of true crime content. Over the years it’s become important to me that the content I consume is doing the work of being ethical in how it portrays the victims and their loved ones. I’m not here for tragedy porn, I’m here because the hows and whys of human interaction fascinate me and sometimes those interactions are negative.    Which is perhaps why Lay Them to Rest found its way onto my to […]

The Politics of Being a Medical Examiner and Coroner

L.A. Coroner by Anne Soon Choi

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Note: I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for my honest review. L.A. Coroner is about as much about the politics of criminal investigation as it is a biography of Dr. Thomas Noguchi, Chief Medical Examiner in LA from 1967 to 1982. That time frame means he was the one in charge of doing the autopsies and some other forensic investigating for the deaths of Marilyn Monroe, Robert F. Kennedy, victims of the Manson Family, Janis Joplin, and other celebrities. I have little […]

“I see poisoners—so calculating, so cold-blooded—as most like the villains of our horror stories.” (CBR11 Bingo)

The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum

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I don’t know what it says about me that I quite enjoy medical history and historic New York, but I do know that it says that The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York is right up my alley. It also wins the prize for longest title of the books I’ve read this year. Blum’s book tracks the time when a pair of forensic scientists, Charles Norris and Alexander Getler began the chemical detective work that forensic science […]

Dead Dogs and Radium Girls

The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum

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The Poisoner’s Handbook is one of those rare non-fiction books that reads more like fiction. The basic narrative follows the head medical examiner of New York City and his chief toxicologist as they essentially help invent forensic science during Prohibition. Each chapter focuses on the problems, mostly murders, that revolve around a particular chemical compound including chloroform, wood alcohol, arsenic, radium, carbon monoxide, and thallium. There’s a lot of chemistry involved but it’s explained in a way that someone who hasn’t taken the subject since […]

Flavia the Mystery Solver Goes to Canada (Half Cannonball Completion!)

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Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce novels are one of my favorite book series at present.  As such, I space out reading them to savor the goodness, so this year I ordered a new one for my birthday, which I quickly devoured.  Also, I wanted to read something special for the completion of my half cannonball (Huzzah!  Hip Hooray!) But enough about me, on to the book! Bradley has created a precocious and endearing detective in Flavia. Much like I consider Phryne Fisher of the Miss […]

Another unbelievable conspiracy thriller

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This is the first in a new series about FBI special agent and forensic artist Sydney Fitzpatrick, written by Burcell, herself an FBI-trained forensic artist. A somewhat better tale than Burcell’s The Dark Hour which I recently reviewed, this novel focuses on Fitzpatrick’s personal crisis over whether to follow up on brand-new clues about her father’s murder 20 years earlier, or to leave it alone.  Of course, had she left it alone, we would have no story, so…. There is a race against time, as […]



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