Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Two women, one plane crash.

The Last Flight by Julie Clark

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Two women meet by chance in an airport, both on the run from their former lives, and decide to swap identities and plane tickets in order to further obscure their trails. One plane crashes and the other doesn’t. This book examines both the fallout from the crash in Claire’s POV (the wife of the famous son of a famous politician, who is fleeing an abusive marriage to said famous son) and the six month lead-up to the crash in Eva’s POV (I won’t spoil what […]

So much fun. So fucked up. Can I say that?

The Mad and the Bad by Jean-Patrick Manchette

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First of all I have to cop to cheating on this. Kind of. The beginning of this review is maybe 2 years old, however, I just reread the book! So…recycling and expanding. It’s fine! la la la just never you mind I READ THIS IN ONE SITTING. It’s funny, it’s dark, it’s cartoonish, it’s Tarantinoesque, it’s either brilliant social/political/economic/mental health commentary or the rantings of a crazy person. Or both. I loved it. The friend who gave it to me said, “Yeah, he is pretty […]

Reading, Reading, Reading

Broken Places by Tracy Clark

The A.B.C. Murders by Agatha Christie

Solos by Kitty Burns Florey

The Lady Upstairs by Halley Sutton

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Finishing off the year right with another round of great crime fiction… Broken Places 4 stars A really good debut novel that’s pure Chicago without being annoying. A little predictable towards the end but well-written nonetheless. Also, much love for featuring black Roman Catholicism, which is a different expression than the commonly mass produced (re:white) Roman Catholicism of crime novels and movies.   The A.B.C. Murders 4 stars This one was about to highlight why I’m not a big Christie fan, despite usually enjoying her novels. Whereas […]

All the good things about her had to be taken away, too.

Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter

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My stay at home obsession with the My Favorite Murder podcast led me to this title. Not something that I would generally read, but Georgia Hardstark’s ringing endorsement nudged me to give it a try. Not sure that it was really my bag, but I can see the appeal for some true crime fiends. Over two decades after their older sister’s disappearance, her two estranged siblings find themselves confronting the trauma of their childhood all over again. The youngest sister, Claire, is living a privileged life of […]

Book that made me go hmmmm…

The Once and Future Spy by Robert Littell

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I am a huge fan of mystery and spy novels, so when I saw this in a Free Little Library I picked it up based on the title alone.  I then read the blurb on the back of the book from a NY Times review which called Littell the American John Le Carré.  I don’t like Le Carré’s work (based on the two books of his that I have read), so it took me a while to decide I was going to read this anyway […]

Second verse same as the first?

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

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A group of old friends from college go on vacation together every New Year’s Eve. They tell themselves that after the initial awkwardness of reuniting wears off, they realize how much they still have in common and mean to one another. But not New Year’s Eve 2018. The differences have become more pronounced, and their physical and emotional distance reminds them of long-held grievances and hurt feelings. When one of them is found dead, everyone’s a suspect (okay, maybe not the infant). After loving Lucy […]



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