Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A murder mystery within a murder mystery, and a lovely homage to the genre.

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz

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I really, really enjoyed this one. I’ve struggled the past several weeks to really get into the books I’m reading, even if I’m liking them. But I just fell into this book. Horowitz has a lot of fun playing around with his premise and the conventions of a whodunit, and it’s fun to read as a result. The book opens with a frame story. Alan Conway, the famous author of the Atticus Pünd detective books, has turned in his last Pünd book, and his editor […]

Checking In

Out On the Cutting Edge by Lawrence Block

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Although there is a mystery at the heart of the novel, eventually growing to encompass two mysteries, this feels like more of a hangout tale. Apparently, Lawrence Block never meant for his star character Matthew Scudder to go beyond four or five books but after writing a flashback tale in When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, he decided to expand the series to Scudder’s life post-alcohol. Out on the Cutting Edge, book seven in the series, is the first of those efforts and it feels like Block […]

The End/ Beginning of Tess

Hush Hush by Laura Lippman

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Sigh. What a great book this was. I was initially skeptical for how Lippman was doing this (interview style format sprinkled with third person POVs) but it really works. I also liked the conversation around motherhood. A mother killing their child is seen as being a horrific thing with a lot of people not even wanting to get to the point they can understand how that happens. I thought that everything really worked in this one. The characters, the writing, the flow, and even the […]

Knight Errant

Songs of Innocence by Richard Aleas

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There’s a reason why I don’t often revisit books I liked once upon a time: they’re probably not as good as I remember. When I reread stuff, it’s usually to either confirm or satisfy some sort of curiosity about the first dance I had with a book. Otherwise, I’d just as soon let it sit in my memory as I’d prefer. I’ll probably never revisit “Richard Aleas”‘ (Charles Ardai’s) Little Girl Lost. It was one of my favorite books from 2010. I remember it being a thrilling […]

Behind the Scenes Look at a Presidential Election via Prey

Extreme Prey by John Sandford

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I think that this was one of the strongest offerings in the Prey series. I still could not give it five stars though since there seems to be some ridiculousness with Lucas and his next job I think will get discussed further in the next book. At this point, they should have just retired Lucas and switched to someone else to focus on in this series. How he is running around in his late 50s, I think is a question. I did like the different […]

Great Short Story Involving Children’s Books

The Book Thing by Laura Lippman

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Well this wasn’t a bad short story involving Tess. I liked the overall message about the importance of books, but think at times that Lippman via Tess was throwing way too much out there about how readers that use e-book readers, and or bookstores to help them find books as being less than other readers was a bit much. I definitely get the pangs one gets when small bookstores and the like close. There was a used bookstore up the street from me that closed […]



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