Jake – Cannonball Read 13

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Ol’ Hollywood

Windhall by Ava Barry

April 11, 2021 by Jake Leave a Comment

Sigh. Why can’t books like this be easier to review? There’s so much to like about Ava Barry’s debut novel Windhall…and so much that grated on my nerves. I really wanted to push this to a charity first-book-4-star review and I just couldn’t. The book kind of feels like the version of the decaying mansion at the center of the story: beautiful and glamorous but uninhabitable and far past its prime. Probably easier with this one to pull out the old good/bad formula: Good: -The book […]

The Players and the Game

The Rage by Gene Kerrigan

April 10, 2021 by Jake Leave a Comment

This is billed for fans of The Wire and I totally get that. I always think that Wire-like books are ones similar to George Pelecanos novels, books I admire more than enjoy. This is one such work. There is a lot to admire about this one. Gene Kerrigan’s prose is smooth and he definitely understands Recession Era Ireland. I got a good sense of what happened over there and how it affected everyone from the moneymakers to the lower class. The set ups to all of the crimes […]

Do You Want to Win the War on Terror, or Not?

A Most Wanted Man by John Le Carré

April 9, 2021 by Jake Leave a Comment

When the Cold War ended, a lot of espionage/thriller writers didn’t know what to do with themselves. Tom Clancy, in particular, invented new villains and resurrected old ones for the US to shadowbox with. We were the last remaining superpower and there really wasn’t anything threatening us. And then 9/11 happened. It was like plugging in an electrical socket. Overnight, there emerged a raft of anti-terrorist fiction that both purports to understand Islam (it does not) and/or the Middle East (ditto). It continues today, a […]

Staten Island!

The Devil She Knows by Bill Loehfelm

April 7, 2021 by Jake Leave a Comment

For the last 48 hours, I’ve been convinced that something was wrong with me, that the other shoe would drop and I would start thinking about this book differently. I picked it up because it’s the first in a series that was lauded by an author I like (although apparently he read others in the series and has yet to get to this one). The reviews on it were less than stellar but the premise hooked me: overworked bartender falls into political conspiracy Hitchock-style, has […]

Binge

The Blackbird by Richard Stark

Dead Connection by Alafair Burke

The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black

April 7, 2021 by Jake 3 Comments

Anytime I finish a tome (in this case, Don DeLillo’s Underworld), I tend to binge read in order to get back in the swing of things. Here are three books I picked up over the weekend… The Blackbird *** Someone asked on Twitter recently that if you could take three traits from a writer for yourself, what would they be? I should have mentioned Donald Westlake’s amazing versatility. Just consider the Grofield series: first a heist tale, then a locked room mystery, now a spy thriller, […]

persnickety chick on Stepping out of the comfort zoneIt was a nice read - nothing too extreme and some good twists
Malin on The Wheel of Time (Part I)Good luck with your re-read, I'm never going to finish this series. I REALLY wish you hadn't gone into detail about David and Leigh Eddings,...
ingres77 on The Wheel of Time (Part I)I remember when it came out, and I think my sister liked it. My fear would be that it came out at a time when...
wicherwill on Whales… in… space!The next book drops some of the plotlines (because, yes, there are too many) and then promptly picks up another handful to replace all of...
narfna on The Wheel of Time (Part I)Anjelica Huston is in it! And Julianna Margulies. And Michael Vartan (this is the reason I watched it).

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