Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Doors Should Stay Closed

Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent

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This book messed with me in a real way. It left me feeling very sad. Impossible to say how without revealing the ending. But the whole book is…well it’s something. A woman whose trauma-informed behavior makes her not understand societal norms. The reader starts with that and slowly unpacks everything. Everything. I’m usually nervous when writers try to write neurodiverse characters. I liked Motherless Brooklyn the second time around but am not a huge fan of how Lethem wrote Lionel Essrog. I’ve never been able to get […]

“It’s harder to come back than it is to arrive”

In a Lonely Place by Dorothy Hughes

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CBR Bingo Square: Violence Maddeningly, I now don’t know what put Dorothy Hughes’s 1947 noir In a Lonely Place on my radar. (I thought it was Susan Straight’s 1001-book literary map of America, but…apparently not?) All I know is that I am a sucker for A) mystery novels, and B) novels about my home state, and what reliably ticks both boxes? Noir. And Dorothy Hughes was a new discovery for me, which made this novel all the more appealing. Also, deliciously, In a Lonely Place isn’t a […]

Titanium Noir

Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway

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I was lured in by another beautiful cover on the library shelf. A reference to William Gibson mixed with Raymond Chandler on the back, and I obviously had to bring this one home. Now that I’ve finished, I can say I’m glad that bright green caught my eye, but I’m not sure I’ll be actively searching out more Nick Harkaway. I’ve said before I love a gritty detective novel with a twist, and that’s just what this is. This is set in a future with […]

Pregnancy Blues

Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott

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First and foremost: if pregnancy and/or pregnancy loss triggers you in any way, give this one a hard pass. The best thing that can be said about Beware the Woman — another great tale from the great Megan Abbott — is that you can easily classify it in multiple genres. Domestic suspense, noir, even horror. This is definitely a book about body horror and the horror of women living under the shadow of patriarchal violence. It is so many things but most of all, it’s a helluva […]

That’s a lotta corpses, bro

A Man Named Doll by Jonathan Ames

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I liked the other Jonathan Ames books I’ve read, and learned ten seconds ago that he’s the creator of Bored to Death, which, for anyone who doesn’t know, is a show on HBO Max (which I haven’t seen, but which multiple people have told me I’d like). Anyway. A guy named Happy Doll – for real, his parents named him that…seriously? a little much right off the bat – is an ex-cop who’s now a fairly unsuccessful, i.e., not busy,  private detective. A friend comes […]

You Had Me at Braineater

Braineater Jones by Stephen Kozeniewski

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Braineater Jones (as he calls himself), has a problem. He woke up dead in a swimming pool and he has no idea who he was before he was undead. He also doesn’t know why he’s undead and why there are a whole bunch of undead people around these days…these are just some of the many mysteries that our self-described private dick has to tackle. Taking place in the 1930’s this is a fun little play on a noir novel as Jones deals with the “dames”, […]



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