Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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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 […]

Definitely My Wheelhouse

Black Water Rising by Attica Locke

Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke

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As a reader of mysteries, I’ve always been a fan of the more hardboiled variety and especially those with a strong sense of place—George Pelecanos writing about Washington D.C., Dennis Lehane writing about Boston, James Lee Burke writing about Louisiana, and most recently, Craig Johnson writing about Absaroka County (not a real county) in Wyoming.  Well, now I can add Attica Locke to this list. Her focus is East Texas and her novels are rich and complex, featuring flawed protagonists, who find themselves in tricky […]

Texas noir. #CBRBingo

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Project: Catch Up On Review Backlog commences. No promises on the quality of my next ten or so reviews. I just want to get them done. (This will probably unfortunately result in subpar reviews for books that deserve much better.) Let’s start with a book I finished over a month ago, Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke. First things first, this book was incredibly well done. It’s a crime book set in Texas, featuring a black Texas Ranger as its protagonist. I knew that going in. […]

He had forgotten that the most elemental instinct in human nature is not hate but love, the former inextricably linked to the latter

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I will likely read or listen to any book Attica Locke feels like writing. I really hope this, along with all her books, become movies or tv shows, because she has such an ear for dialogue and narrative, and is very good at plotting and creating stories that work and include a lot of additional interesting topics. This novel starts with a standoff between a white supremacist and an older Black man who refuses to take any more shit off people like the white asshole. […]

Ahead of the Curve

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3.5 stars. Attica Locke is simply the best. I really wish I hadn’t read The Cutting Season first though. It’s always hard evaluating an author’s other work fairly when you know they’re capable of the absolute best. If a book is better than most, but not quite living up to their best work, how do you rate that? My gut response is to rate a sense of disappointment. Taking a few weeks to write this review, I’ve come around to appreciating this book for what […]



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