Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“ We locked eyes, not needing to speak to each other. We understood that survival was everything. It was the meaning of life.”

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

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Almost three years ago I reviewed Peter Swanson’s Eight Perfect Murders, a book I thoroughly enjoyed. For some unknown reason, right after I finished the book  I went on Good Reads and spoiled a number of his other books for myself, including The Kind Worth Killing. Thankfully I completely forgot the plot, so I picked this up for a fast read. My reviews of mystery thrillers are often not terribly long because I don’t want to spoil anything. This is particularly true for this book […]

May-July Leftovers

There Will Be Fire: Margaret Thatcher, the IRA, and Two Minutes That Changed History by Rory Carroll

City of Dreams by Don Winslow

Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist by Jennifer Wright

Under Color of Law by Aaron Philip Clark

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

The Last Quarry by Max Allan Collins

Tripwire by Jack Reacher

Baby Moll by John Farris

Only the Dead Know Brooklyn by Thomas Boyle

The Laundromat: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite by Jake Bernstein

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich

X by Davey Davis

Our Last Season: A Writer, A Fan, A Friendship by Harvey Araton

The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

Hard Rain by Samantha Jayne Allen

The Boys From Biloxi by John Grisham

Ex Machina Book Four by Brian K. Vaughan

Jacket Weather by Mike DeCapite

Straight Cut by Madison Smartt Bell

The Crust on Its Uppers by Derek Raymond

That Kind of Danger by Donna Masini

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

Spenser Confidential by Ace Atkins

Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead

Weyward by Emilia Hart

The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon, I Mean Noel by Ellen Raskin

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

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I usually do these at the end of the month but then I went through a big reading slump March-May. And then I roared back but realized I was behind. So apologies for this being so long. There Will Be Fire **** A good, readable text on a moment in history I knew little about. Even after reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing, I still had a lot of problem keeping track of all the socio-political dynamics so it’s good that Rory Carroll makes it accessible […]

March 2023 Leftovers

The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown, Maureen Farrell

The Terra-Cotta Dog by Andrea Cammalleri

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

Tina, Mafia Soldier by Maria Rosa Cutrufelli

The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz

An Assassin in Utopia: The True Story of a Nineteenth-Century Sex Cult and a President's Murder by Susan Wels

Every Man a King by Walter Mosley

The Triumph of the Spider Monkey by Joyce Carol Oates

Robert B. Parker's Lullaby by Ace Atkins

The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker

Play the Fool by Lina Chern

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Man, that month went fast The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion**** I might have a lot more to say about this one had I finished it weeks ago but I’ll be honest, I’m starting to hit my limit on books about tech geniuses that the public discovers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be only after they’re handed billions of dollars. Theranos, Uber and now WeWork all run by self-glorifying con artists. This book is as well done as the […]

When an Entire Book is a Spoiler

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

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Peter Swanson’s Eight Perfect Murders is a fantastic mystery/psychological thriller, but be warned: if you aren’t a hardcore mystery buff you may find a slew of classic mysteries spoiled for you. Malcolm Kershaw is the owner of a bookstore specializing in mysteries. One night he receives a call from an FBI agent about a series of murders that may be connected to a blog post Malcolm wrote in the past called “Eight Perfect Murders.” In the blog post Malcolm listed eight books that feature what […]

“I was born with a different kind of morality. The morality of an animal—of a crow or a fox or an owl—and not of a normal human being”

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

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This was extremely entertaining. I can see why people keep publishing and reading Peter Swanson books, if they are only chasing the high they got from this book. The other book I’ve read from him was also really great, but if this and Eight Perfect Murders are his best books, and some of the others are apparently abysmal, I might be done with him and will just go out on a high note (unless I start hearing from other people that his writing is back to up […]

“The thing is, and maybe I’m biased by all those years I’ve spent in fictional realms built on deceit, I don’t trust narrators any more than I trust the actual people in my life. We never get the whole truth, not from anybody.” #CBRBINGO – Elephant

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson

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This was the first of two extremely entertaining thrillers that I read by Peter Swanson in 2022. I fear I may have read his best work now, so I’m not sure if I’ll be checking out any more of his stuff, but I can absolutely recommend Eight Perfect Murders as a stand-out thriller (along with The Kind Worth Killing). Holy shit, was this thing a page-turner. So the plot here is that bookshop owner Malcolm Kershaw, years ago, compiled a list of literature’s most perfect […]



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