Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“No one could possess a shred of doubt that Olalla’s most famous institution was the sanitarium up on the heights.”

Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest by Gregg Olson

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I added Starvation Heights to my list of books to read back in 2017 but it wasn’t until my current run of true crime reads that it made its way in front of my eyeballs. Part of me, a not insignificant part of me, wishes that I had picked this book up seven years ago and read it then, I think I might have enjoyed it more if I had. Or if I had not read it immediately following The League of Lady Poisoners.   The […]

Deliberate or Cruel

Deliberate Cruelty: Truman Capote, the Millionaire's Wife, and the Murder of the Century by Roseanne Montillo

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I think Roseanne Montillo is on to something when considering why Truman Capote disdained Anne Woodward so much: their similar backgrounds. Neither was born of upper class New York stock. Neither would have gotten anywhere if not for dint of relationship (Truman’s mom landing a Wall Street guy, Woodward apparently being hot enough to bag a Brahmin). Like the song Creep, they don’t belong here. And both took different, yet stylistically similar paths to get where they were. This is an incredibly readable book that […]

“I know something no one else in the world knows.”

The Forever Witness by Edward Humes

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As a case on its own this wouldn’t have been as interesting, but combined with the focus on DNA technology and how it’s changing, this really worked for me. The murders of Tanya Van Cuylenborg and Jay Cook in 1987 went unsolved until 2018, when the cold case detective, Jim Scharf, decided to use genetic genealogy on the case, and suddenly within weeks they had a suspect and an arrest. But the suddenness of events in 2018 was based on decades of cold case detecting, […]

“Because I know the day you come here to tell me that she’s dead will be the worst day of my life.”

Green River Killer: A True Detective Story by Jeff Jensen (Writer), Jonathan Case (Illustrator)

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Reading Doomed sparked a push for more true crime reading and I hit up my TBR and put in a slew of library requests. First in was another Read Harder choice, Green River Killer: A True Detective Story by Jeff Jensen and Jonathan Case. Before this year I was unfamiliar with the existence of this book, or the decades long investigation it chronicles. But such is the reward of hitting up library lists for challenges, particularly banned books. (The challenge task was specifically banned comics […]

“How many Reenas are there in this goddamn world?”

Under the Bridge: The True Story of the Murder of Reena Virk by Rebecca Godfrey

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This is a very well written work of non-fiction. The author is in fact a writer of fiction, but she spent years investigating the crime at the center of the story (now a series on Hulu) and interviewing the many people involved. She attended trials and spoke with legal and law enforcement agents. This story of the murder of a 14-year-old girl by her peers is both chilling and difficult to put down. Godfrey paints a vivid picture of a community rocked by the shocking […]

April 2024 Leftovers

X = : Poems by Stephen Berg

Charcoal Joe by Walter Mosley

A Game of Lies by Clare Mackintosh

The Hurricane Blonde by Halley Sutton

Vineland by Thomas Pynchon

L.A. Requiem by Robert Crais

Watch It Burn by Kristen Bird

Sleep With Strangers by Dolores Hitchens

The Fixer: Moguls, Mobsters, Movie Stars, and Marilyn by Josh Young

One of Us Is Wrong by Sam Holt

The Fade Out by Ed Brubaker

The Second Murderer by Denise Mina

Blackmailer by George Axelrod

The Darkest Glare: A Story of Murder, Blackmail, and Real Estate Greed in 1979 Los Angeles by Chip Jacobs

Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith

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Happy April, y’all! X = : Poems**** This is why library book bingos are necessary. I only checked this one out because I needed to read a book of poems and I wanted to check the nettlesome “X” off the A-Z reading list. A convoluted reason to begin with and this wasn’t even the book I thought I was getting! I thought I’d get a different X by a different author. I’m glad I got this one. Some of these really spoke to me, including […]



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