Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Quarantine Reading

Conviction by Denise Mina

Kinds of Love, Kinds of Death by Donald Westlake

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Been doing a lot of reading to pass the time during the quarantine. I finished these two books back to back, both were good in their own respective ways. So here are the reviews… Conviction I didn’t mean for this to be my first Denise Mina book. I’ve tried and failed twice to get into Garenthill. But the premise seemed too good to pass up and I thought it would be a fun pleasure read. It starts off rocky. The main character, whose perspective we get first […]

The Description Does Not Do It Justice

Wall of Silence by Tracy Buchanan

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I liked this book SO much more than I thought I would. When I first learned of it, possibly here on CBR, and read the description on Amazon, it did not appeal to me. But the book is so much better than the description leads you (or me, at least) to believe. The main character is Melissa, who comes home from work one day to find her 3 children standing by her husband, Patrick, who is lying unconscious on the floor after having been stabbed. […]

The Killers

All The Flowers Are Dying by Lawrence Block

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I really do truly love this series. I didn’t expect to tear through it as fast as I did and now I’ve only got a few to read. Stupid pandemic. I’m also glad I read this series when I did. Had I gone through it in my early-20s, when I read my first Scudder, I don’t think I would have appreciated the solemn nature of Block’s famous detective, nor the shoe leather detective work he is known for. This is in many ways the last […]

Storms A Comin’

The Broken Places by Ace Atkins

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For a long time, I was wary of starting Ace Atkins’ Quinn Colson series. I’m not from the south but my dad is and I used to vacation there a lot. I know how often southern folk are caricaturized. I also know how people will write off the south’s racist legacy in favor of being “complex” (looking at you Gregory Iles, although I’ve never made it past 20 pages of a Penn Cage book so maybe he gets better). I assumed Quinn Colson, ex-Army Ranger, […]

Picture, If you will. . . .

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

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All right, I know that is not a legit Twilight Zone quote, but it is the perfect intro to this book.  This was a ride.  Great mystery and ghosts, how can you go wrong?   Young Viv Delaney, on her way from Illinois to New York City, ends up at a rundown motel, just off the main road, in Fell, New York. You know the kind of motel, mid-century, pull your car up to the door of your room, and the power tends to dramatically […]

On the Precipice

Hope to Die by Lawrence Block

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Ah yes, the year 2000. Right before The Troubles. Before 9/11, Katrina, Iraq, Recession 1, the Tea Party, melting coastlines,  Trump, and the coronavirus hailing Recession II. Matthew Scudder has emerged from the social decay of 70s and 80s Manhattan to make a decent life for itself in a city that’s enjoying its final moments of pre-9/11 glory. But who knows what trouble lurks in the hearts of men? The Scudder does! This time with (sigh) yet another serial killer. These have always been the […]



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