Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Slow Start, Fabulous End

Endless Night by Agatha Christie

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Bingo: Wealth  One of the characters is very rich and it is central to the plot. I’m going on a tear of mysteries/thrillers, and Endless Night is a banger. The main character Mike is a bit of a ne’er-do-well. He flits from job to job and does well with the ladies. He comes upon a dilapidated house in the country called The Towers. A Romani fortuneteller who lives near the property warns him the land and its house is cursed, but Mike pays her no […]

Good Mystery, So So Ending

The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie

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Agatha Christie’s The Moving Finger is a Miss Marple mystery that features very little Miss Marple. The narrator is Jerry Burton, who has come to a little village with his sister Joanna to recover from an injury. He unfolds the story and Miss Marple doesn’t show up until sixty percent in. Even then, she plays a minimal role except at the end when the mystery is solved. The village has been plagued with anonymous poison pen letters sent to various residents. Jerry and Joanna even […]

A Poirot without Poirot

The Hollow by Agatha Christie

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I thought I had read every Agatha Christie there is, but I came across one I hadn’t read (or don’t remember having read): The Hollow. It is a Hercule Poirot novel, but he hardly features in the story at all. He appears a few times, including the end, but the book really centers on the characters/suspects. Lady Lucy Angkatell and her husband Lord Henry have an estate called the Hollow. At a weekend gathering (it’s always a weekend gathering, isn’t it?), an unfaithful doctor is […]

“The case does look very black against you. Nevertheless, I accept your assurance.”

The Witness for the Prosecution by Agatha Christie

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Last year I read my first ever Agatha Christie novel and enjoyed the experience so much that I put another on this year’s list. Without a better idea of where to start I hunted up works published by Christie in 1925 and the short story now known as The Witness for the Prosecution fit the bill. I didn’t know much going in about what the story contained and decided that was probably for the best.   This 50-minute audio (read by the incomparable Christopher Lee) is an excellent example of how Christie honed in on the mechanics of writing to tell her […]

Should A Classic Be Discounted Because of the Racist Origins of its First Title?

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

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As a teenager, I was a huge Agatha Christie fan. There’s a reason she ranks among the most widely published authors of all time (behind only Shakespeare). The lady can spin a yarn! I’m proud to say I guessed the murderer in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd when I first read it, though I recently reread And Then There Were None and did not guess said murderer. (I haven’t read the book in twenty-plus years, so it feels brand-new). The title has been changed twice […]

Quick Questions with a Cannonballer: a Classic mystery

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Hi, Classic! Thanks so much for agreeing to participate in our interview! I see from your Cannonball Read profile that you’ve been participating in and off since CBR 9. How did you find us? I used to post on Pajiba, and reading Pajiba Love, I saw that there were often book reviews and I started to read the reviews that were linked. There were more CBR commenters back in those days, and I think it was Ms. Julien who told me about CBR and how […]



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