Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Nuns and Prostitutes

Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen

A Time to Scatter Stones by Lawrence Block

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I knocked out two quick books in the last day, neither of which won me over. Mariette in Ecstasy Judging by other reviews of this book, it appears as if I’m taking a rare middle ground stance. I thought the prose was beautiful and the scene descriptions lush and full. I enjoyed several individual pages. But with a big cast of characters and a central one the writer makes intentionally mysterious, none of it resonates. Plotting is marginal at best. It just lurches from one […]

Great mystery and setting hampered by repetition

In the Barren Ground by Loreth Anne White

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I’ve been in a bit of a book rut lately. I had such high hopes for the past few novels I’ve read, but they were all disappointing. I needed something reliable to give me a win.  A few months ago, I ran across Loreth Anne White’s In the Dark. I devoured the fast-paced thriller in a couple of days, and it left me eager to read more of her work. In the Barren Ground has rave reviews on Goodreads, so I thought it might be […]

A Twofer

The Night and the Music by Lawrence Block

Top of the Heap by Erle Stanley Gardner

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I knocked out two books over the weekend, both good enough in their own ways.   The Night and the Music 4 stars I’ve never really liked short stories but I like Matthew Scudder and, aside from a novella, this is all that I have left to get from his tale. And I enjoyed each story on its own in some way. The mystery ones were fun but the ones where we see Scudder’s humanity are often better. I do wish the Mick Ballou ones were longer […]

Last Call

A Drop of the Hard Stuff by Lawrence Block

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I know there’s a book of short stories and a novella to read but this is about as fitting of a conclusion to the Matthew Scudder saga as any. Block’s novel is a throwback to Scudder in the early days of his sobriety, and like his previous throwback novel When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, this too feels like a self-contained story and not an author trying to do a cash-grab prequel rife with easter eggs. In this one, Matt is struggling with his sobriety almost as much […]

Remembrances of Days Past

The Forsaken by Ace Atkins

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I’ve discovered the pattern in Ace Atkins’ Quinn Colson series, this being book four: person from the past comes back to Tibbehah County, a lot of staring and some incidents happen and then it all leads up to a big bang. If these books weren’t so well-written, I’d probably be done with them but Ace Atkins keeps finding ways to make his world an interesting and readable one. It helps that Quinn Colson, while being a tough guy Army Ranger sheriff, is also allowed to […]

Pulp Fiction

The Serialist by David Gordon

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Back in the day, I’m talking the 20s-50s, writers used to make their bread by writing pulp tales on the side while working on their main works. They would release the former under pseudonyms. Hard boiled mysteries, campy science fiction, erotica, plenty of great writers plied their trade this way. Lawrence Block wrote dozens of trashy erotic novels under a variety of names before transitioning to mainstream mystery fare. The Serialist is a tribute to that form of writing and for that, I almost love the […]



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