Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“This is the man.”

The Crime of the Century: Richard Speck and the Murders That Shocked a Nation by Dennis L. Breo , William J. Martin

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On a hot summer night in 1966, unemployed seaman Richard Speck broke into a Chicago townhouse and murdered eight nurses who lived there – but a ninth, Corazon Amurao, survived to testify against him. I’ve known about the Speck case for several years, and it’s really quite a horrific yet bizarre story that made a great impact on the judicial system in Illinois. I was excited to get into a book that would cover it in depth, but I found myself startled and pleased with […]

Why is it always the innocents who suffer most?

Bitter Blood: A True Story of Southern Family Pride, Madness, and Multiple Murder by Jerry Bledsoe

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CBR 15 Bingo – Edibles: Fritz, Susie and her sons are on mind-boggling amounts of vitamin pills, which they are observed taking by the handful to the bemusement and horror of their friends and family. No one can think of a reason why anyone would kill Delores and Janie Lynch in such a cold-blooded manner. But when their in-laws are murdered barely a year later, the police suspect that the motive for the deaths might be found among the ranks of the family. Bitter Blood is one […]

A Deep and Dark Conspiracy

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann

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Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI was utterly infuriating. I read it in anticipation of the movie that’s set to be released in a few months, and I knew it wasn’t going to be a terribly happy story. But I felt myself getting worked up about it none the less.  The Osage once possessed a territory that covered much of modern-day Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. But encroaching expansion from the US government lead to the Osage being mostly displaced […]

Nothing Says Different Times Like Tobacco Power Plays

The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde by Erle Stanley Gardner

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cbr15bingo Nostalgia You did what, Sergeant Holcomb?  You put Perry Mason and Della Street in separate holding cells, and then you had the both of them strip searched?  Oh, son, you just made a huge mistake.  That is so not on.  You are so going down. OK, let’s back up a bit.  Diane Regis, she with the shiner, has made her way to Mason’s office dressed in a fur coat and not much underneath.  Seems as though her employer’s step-son (she’s a radio actress, employed […]

Her whole family was murdered and she’s not OK

Out of the Ashes by Kara Thomas

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Samantha Newsom is leaving her shift as a nurse to help assist in the suicide of her terminally ill uncle Gil at the beginning of this story. It’s quite a tone to set immediately. The next morning, Sam gets a call that her uncle has died (duh), but nobody suspects any foul play. Hot take – you should be allowed to decide when you and how you die if you’re terminally ill. But that’s a topic for another time. Sam heads back out to Gil’s […]

It’s not nice to spy on people hiding in the woods

What We Saw: A Thriller by Mary Downing Hahn

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cbr15bingo: Nostalgia: For the days when I first read this author, a young kid with no adult problems! When I was asked who my favorite author was as a kid, usually I would say Mary Downing Hahn. I had others (Walter Dean Myers, R. L. Stine, Christopher Pike, to name a few), but she was always one. Then, as an adult a gal I met via pen palling said she liked her too, so we bonded over our like of this author.  And when I […]



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