Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Mind Games

Blood Sugar by Sascha Rothchild

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It’s well known that I’m not much of a fan of serial killer fiction. Everyone’s trying (and failing) to ripoff Hannibal Lecter, making their killers even more diabolical than their fictional predecessors. Serial killers are boring. I’m more interested in the “why” of people killing. What makes a human being take another human being’s life? Sascha Rothschild’s confidently written debut work attempts to answer that question through the eyes of a serial killer who swears she isn’t one. It’s difficult to create a legit complex main character […]

The Losers

The Alcoholics by Jim Thompson

Miami Purity by Vicki Hendricks

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I knocked out two quickie noir tales yesterday, both about sad sacks trying to get through life. One I liked way more than the other. The Alcoholics Jim Thompson 2 stars The Year of Jim Thompson continues with one of his more forgettable works. The New York Review of Books described it as “satire with a bludgeon” and I suppose that’s true because I felt bludgeoned by this one. If you like your satire this heavy handed, this one may work. But it didn’t for me. […]

Party in the City Where the Heat is On

Silent City by Alex Segura

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I enjoy crime fiction that effectively doubles as a tour guide. I’ve never been to Miami before so part of Silent City‘s allure for me was to learn more about the city. Charles Willeford does it somewhat effectively but he’s looking at it through the ethnographic lens of an old, racist white guy. Alex Segura gives me that and more. I appreciate writers who talk about their urban environments as if they actually dwell there. No “this is a good/bad neighborhood” kind of nonsense, but […]

Ugh, Dad, You’re Embarrassing Me…

The Way We Die Now by Charles Willeford

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And so I have come to the end of Charles Willeford’s Hank Moseley series which, while at times was quite entertaining, mostly disappointed me after its great entry (Miami Blues). As I said in my reviews of the last two books, I expected more cat-and-mouse affairs with Moseley and criminals. I didn’t think this would be a series about a sad sack cop’s private life with some police bureaucracy and a little detective work thrown in. That’s mostly what these books are. And while I’ve […]

Home Improvement

Sideswipe by Charles Willeford

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Alan Sepinwall, my favorite TV critic, has a running gag in his columns where he talks about how he’d like to see a character from whatever show he’s reviewing have a spin-off where they do banal tasks relational to the character’s motives. My personal favorite was the suggestion that goofy Justified gangster Wynn Duffy get a series called Wynnipeg in which he gets continually frustrated at teaching Canadians how to be criminals. At any rate, three books into the Hoke Moseley series and I feel like this one, as well […]

Family Matters

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I discovered Charles Willeford’s work last year and he’s become one of my favorite crime writers. Cockfighter was the best crime book I read in 2017 and his first Hank Moseley story Miami Blues will be chalked up to one of the best I’ve read this year. A raucous tale of the worst cat-and-mouse game ever played between cop and criminal. Willeford has a skill for three-dimensional characters, good-but-not-flashy dialogue, wry humor, and measured cynicism. All of those are on display for New Hope for the Dead, a book […]



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