Another contender for favorite book of the year right here. She Rides Shotgun is kind of like an urban crime thriller mashed up with an old school western. Think of True Grit meets Veronica Mars and you’ll come close to the feeling of this book. As a superfan of badass literary girls, it will surprise no one that I enjoyed this immensely. Polly, eleven years old and a bit sheltered, gets picked up from school by her ex-con father unexpectedly one day. Turns out her […]
A wheel-spinning waste of time
I’ve been on a ‘thriller’ kick recently, because I’ve been needing to keep my brain engaged while I’m nursing my three-month-old. These “next Gone Girl”s seem to be sitting well, because they’re mostly interesting enough that I want to keep reading them even when I’m tired and brain-dead. (When I’m all the way tired, though, I’m doing a Dorothy Sayers reread. That’s a lot of fun, and I know the stories well enough that my brain can gloss over bits and I don’t lose out!) The Widow is one […]
Not the Thrill I Was Hoping For
My latest read was actually an Audible listen. I’ve realized recently that I’m a sucker for an English thriller featuring a 20- to 30-something woman. Also, I often like books that tell a story in two time periods. So J.P. Delaney’s The Girl Before would seem to be a match for me. Two Londoners–Emma (then) and Jane (now)–each rent the same austere house. Each sees it as the solution to her problems. Each follows a path that leads to jeopardy. Also on that path is […]
Creeping Dread Coated with a Veneer of Bigotry
My introduction to the works of H.P. Lovecraft was most likely the film Reanimator, though I don’t know if I realized the source at the time. I was interested in reading these stories because Lovecraftian mythos is has been the source of so much pop culture that I’ve imbibed – movies, books, video games – Lovecraft has either provided a source for other storytellers to embellish (as in the case of Reanimator) or has inspired all new horrors (like the xenomorph in Alien). Chances are […]
A mysterious murder and excess alcohol consumption? Must be an unreliable female narrated thriller…
I’ve been on a bit of a thriller kick recently, so–like many other Cannonballers–I’ve read In a Dark Dark Wood and The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware. They relied very heavily on the ‘unreliable female narrator’ trope, bringing up inevitable comparisons to The Girl on the Train. They’re not as good as Girl on the Train. (I haven’t read Gone Girl, while I have seen the film, so I can’t compare there.) I’m way behind on my reviewing, but I figured I’d start with these ones. Quick […]
“Nothing good happens in the middle of the night, right?”
Elizabeth receives a call late one night, and it’s the worst news she can imagine. Her son, Tommy, has vanished into the local woods without a trace after spending the day at his usual hangout, a large split boulder deep in the woods that the boys have been calling Devil’s Rock. The friends he was with seem to be hiding something and there are no other leads on where he might have gone. As the official investigation into his disappearance stalls, Elizabeth begins to see […]
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