Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

I liked this one

A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny

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Series: The Inspector Gamache books. I read and reviewed Book 1 in 2016 and since then have read a couple a year. I read Book 11 in August of 2020 and didn’t really like it. I’ve been really back and forth on these books–I’ve loved some and barely been able to finish others. What I remembered most about this series prior to reading this book: I remember very few of the mysteries and even less of the b-plots–the ones that revolved around the corruption within […]

“She was beginning to see how quickly something completely normal could suddenly seem sinister, if you chose to see it that way.”

A Better Man by Louise Penny

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It has long been my habit to try to read each Inspector Gamache book in the month or season it is set, and by happy coincidence A Better Man, the fifteenth book in the series, is set in April. Delayed spring, occasional flooding, and a final snowstorm are all hallmarks of April in my neck of the woods, so I felt right at home with Gamache and the residents of Three Pines. Structurally we are with Gamache and company for one single case, with stunningly […]

…but you can’t pick your family.

A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny

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After immersing myself in the Bernie Madoff story following his death, I was kind of caught off guard at a character that, while probably not based on Madoff given the timing of publication, certainly resembles him. This was probably my favorite Inspector Gamache novel so far. It also reminded me of what frustrates me about the series. I’ll share what’s good in the paragraphs below and then post a spoiler alert to express my frustrations, which will mostly be for longtime Gamache readers. Both the […]

Crime Spree

Skin Deep by Sung J. Woo

The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly

The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny

Hell in the Heartland: Murder, Meth and the Case of Two Missing Girls by Jax Miller

Later by Stephen King

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I binged a lot of crime fiction (with one non-fictional exception) as there was a lot of traffic on my already long commute this week, allowing me to synergize eyeball reading with audio. Plus I took off the weekend so I had some extra time… Skin Deep 3 stars So rare, entertaining and enjoyable to have a transracial adoptee as a protagonist. While author Sung J. Woo doesn’t lean too hard on Siobhan’s background, he weaves it in to make her a fully realized person. The […]

Joyeux Noël

A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny

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There’s 12 days of Christmas, folks. We all have through January 6th to celebrate. So I got my holiday reading in just under the wire. Yay me. Been meaning to return to the Inspector Gamache series after enjoying the first book. The women from my crime fiction class swear to it and I can see why. It’s an engaging mystery series that has the elements of a cozy but is a little more hardened. Three Pines is a charming place and the people all seem […]

“Things sometimes fell apart unexpectedly. It was not necessarily a reflection of how much they were valued.”

Kingdom of the Blind (Inspector Gamache #14) by Louise Penny

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My local library system has reopened for pick up in the past couple weeks and Kingdom of the Blind was the first of my holds from way back in March to come in (and why I’m christening this book my No Money square for bingo in celebration of all things library). I was excited to see it, I love Louise Penny’s way of crafting story but unsure how much death and destruction I was in the mood for. I decided to give American Kingpin a […]



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