Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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The Devil’s Details

Hit Man by Lawrence Block

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Read as part of CBR13Bingo: Gateway. This is an excellent introduction to Lawrence Block, one of my favorite writers. Also proved an excellent introduction for me to his Keller series.  I really don’t have the words to describe Lawrence Block. It’s an appreciation for him that has grown as I’ve gotten older and my tastes have evolved. In my 20s, I’d look for the pulpy mystery shlock with exciting hooks. Now that I’m older, I appreciate the mundane nature of life and how fictionally exciting […]

One Day in February

The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire by Chloe Hooper

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Australia gets a lot of coverage overseas when it comes to our devastating bushfires. The collective bushfires of January 2020 were especially notable for their sense of apocalypse. But as horrific as the 2020 fires were, the summer of 2009 was even more deadly. February 7 was a particularly devastating day for my home state of Victoria; known as ‘Black Saturday,’ the extreme weather conditions helped fan the flames of over 400 individual fires, killing 173 people, and impacting many, many more. I had friends […]

The Chase Is On

The Heathens by Ace Atkins

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Ace Atkins spent the first ten books of his Quinn Colson series meticulously building up a Walking Tall-like story, parsing out a mythos of fictional Tibbehah County and developing the characters. He dialed it up to a boil in book ten, with big payoffs. Although the stakes are still high for this one, it feels like the beginning of a denouement. Yeah there’s still some background as a player from the past comes back to haunt things in the troubled corner of northern Mississippi. But beyond […]

Every Last Fear, and the People Affected by True Crime Entertainment

Every Last Fear by Alex Finlay

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This is the entry for the “Free!” square in bingo. I borrowed it 🙂 This was a really fun book to read. Horribly depressing subject matter, but there were some twists and turns. I won’t say the mystery is impenetrable as it becomes fairly clear about halfway through, but the way the events unfold is very interesting.  Matt Pine is a student at NYU who is dealing with the aftermath of a true crime documentary about his brother, Danny Pine, and the murder of Danny’s […]

Hell Hath Fury

Razorblade Tears by S.A. Crosby

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CN: violence against LGBTQIA+ folk Confession time: It’s been kind of a disappointing year for me in terms of reading fiction. There’s little that moves me anymore; everything feels so rote. That has little to do with contemporary writers, who are constantly twisting their genres, and more with just a continued familiarity with the tropes. Crime writing that used to entertain me when it reached the level of competent now barely moves the needle. And then, there’s S.A. Crosby. I enjoyed Blacktop Wasteland when it came out […]



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