Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Oedipus and Electra

Cropper's Cabin by Jim Thompson

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The year of Jim Thompson continues with what is by far the best book of his I’ve read this calendar year. It may be a cut below his truly greatest works like Pop. 1280 and The Grifters but it’s really darn good. I once heard Jason Concepcion of The Ringer fame compliment Quentin Tarantino by saying that the director “democratizes pop culture.” In other words, he takes B-movie stuff like gangster films and martial arts tales and turns them into high art. Thompson can perhaps be thought of in […]

To Live and Die in LA

Blonde Faith by Walter Mosley

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After going through most of Walter Mosley’s Leonid McGill series, I decided to switch back to the books that drew me to his work in the first place: good ol’ Easy Rawlins. Having read most of the McGill books (and unlike the Rawlins series, they’re mostly the same in terms of plot and tone) I have a fresh perspective on the Rawlins ones and Mosley’s evolution as a writer. McGill has always felt like the character Mosley wanted to write but didn’t get to until […]

When I’m Wrong, I’m Wrong

Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Grann

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First of all, has it been almost 15 years since Hurricane Katrina? Feels like yesterday. This book gave me some bad flashbacks and I’ve never lived anywhere near New Orleans. My God, did this country fail the residents of that city. Secondly, I tried reading this one several times. It always ends up on every “You Have To Read This!!!” list of mysteries. Every time I saw it, I kept wanting it to be different from the book I tried before. Again and again I […]

Way darker than the classic Joshua Jackson vehicle “Skulls”

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

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Secret societies and magic have existed at Yale for centuries…didn’t you know? Don’t worry, most of the students don’t either. But the members of the secret societies are elbow deep in literal blood magic that keeps their alumni wealthy, famous, well-connected, well-liked….you name it (Bush the second’s election makes SO MUCH more sense now). Who keeps this kind of power in check? College students aren’t exactly famous for their good judgment. Enter Lethe House, the ninth house, created as a watchdog to keep the other […]

Murder at an Irish Wedding has too many annoying cozy clichés

Murder at an Irish Wedding by Carlene O'Connor

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Murder at an Irish Wedding is the second book in the Irish Village Mystery series. I absolutely loved the first book, Murder in an Irish Village, when I read it a few years ago. I wanted to continue the series but my local library only had the subsequent novels as mass market paperbacks. I have lupus and its most enduring gift is perpetual hand pain, so I simply can’t hand open mass market paperbacks. Anyway, I was thrilled to discover the entire Irish Village Mystery […]

Turning on a Dirt Road

The Ranger by Ace Atkins

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It’s a good thing The Ranger was my first Ace Atkins novel. He’s written plenty of southern-friend country crime tales and with this one, I find a writer who has developed a style that works. I was weary of these books in the same way I’m reflexively weary of most male lone-wolf time crime tales: they often produce the same cocktail of toxic masculinity, gross misogyny, class and race caricaturization and a big bang shootout to end it all. The Ranger has a big bang shootout to end […]



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