Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Flawed Protagonist

Sam Houston and the American Southwest by Randolph B. Campbell

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Any digging into the past dredges up shameful events and ideas. In 2020 this is especially true in the South. A mix of racism, cruelty, xenophobia, tribalism, and more is immediately obvious. That’s no secret. There are bright spots, though. People like Sam Houston remind us that even in dark times one has the ability to stand up for principles and humanity. Therefore, this book contains some hypertimely encouragement for summer 2020. The first lesson I took is that Houston did what he wanted to, […]

How He Wins

Texas By The Tail by Jim Thompson

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If you saw the movie Uncut Gems, this book answers the question “What if Uncut Gems but Texas?” It’s wild. The year of Jim Thompson continues with one I’ve wanted to get to for some time. The story is familiar: a perpetual loser looking to make the big score, with an attractive woman on his arm and the bad guys always at his back. The bad guys often carry a sheen of legitimacy, whether it’s oil or land money. This is a recurring theme in Thompson novels, his […]

Ghostbuster

Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke

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On the surface, Attica Locke is not reinventing the proverbial cop mystery wheel with her Highway 59 series. Her protagonist is a lone wolf who drinks too much, meddles in other affairs, has woman and family troubles, doesn’t get along with the brass, plays by his own rules, and is a byproduct of the local culture, which he simultaneously loves and loathes. The difference between these and most other white-written bestselling cliched mystery series is that main character Texas Ranger Darren Matthews is black, and […]

Dirty Jobs

South of Heaven by Jim Thompson

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The Year of Jim Thompson continues…with my least favorite version of his novels: the semi-autobiographical one that describes a job in granular detail and tries to shoehorn a crime story in. A great example of this is Nothing More Than Murder. I thought learning more about how the business of movie theater ownership worked in the 1940s would make for a compelling tale. I was wrong, very wrong. I don’t remember much about the crime story in that one but I do recall a lot about handling […]

Darren, Texas Ranger

Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke

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Black writers, like all black people, are not defined solely by being oppressed. The majority of black fiction writers will write about how they deal with racism because it is an every day reality in their lives but it is not the only reality. Attica Locke’s fiction exemplifies this. Darren Mathews, the star of what appears to be the first in a series from Locke, is a complicated man. You empathize for him to a degree because of what he has to endure as a […]

Deep in the Heart of Texas

Mucho Mojo by Joe R. Lansdale

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I hate the term “politically correct.” Let’s just get that out of the way. I think the idea of respecting people’s humanity as they want it to be respected is important. When the vast majority of a marginalized group say they don’t want to be addressed with a certain word or in a certain way, making the decision to listen to them is now the downfall of western civilization. Those of us who don’t share a racial, gender, body- or gender-oriented experience as someone else […]



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