Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Spoiler Alert

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

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I listened to this on audiobook more or less at random because it was available instantly from my library. I saw the movie when it was out in theaters and have not revisited it since. If you’ve seen the film, which is directed by Martin Scorsese and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, you know that it has a rather shocking twist ending which would be impossible to forget. Ergo, I went into the book knowing the ending. But I thought there would be enough thrills along the […]

Solid Thriller

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

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Bingo: Justice I saw the movie Mystic River, based on Dennis Lehane’s novel of the same name, years ago. I remember thinking it was very good. I forgot most of the plot, so I picked the book up. The story features Jimmy, an ex-con. When he was young, his friends Sean and Danny were playing when a car pulls up to them. The men inside kidnap Danny and he escapes four days later, having been sexually abused. The book then jumps 25 years in the […]

Generational Trauma

Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

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“Will anything save me from this months-long reading slump I’m in?” so I cried. Deepti Kapoor’s Age of Vice came close but I think that was largely due to the fact that I haven’t read many stories set in India so I didn’t know the familiar tips and tricks Stateside writers do. Aside from that one, I’ve read a lot of good stuff this year but I’ve also quit a lot because…well I don’t know the “because.” Have my standards gotten higher? Am I just tired of […]

A cool collaboration of thriller writers and characters

Face Off by David Baldacci

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This is the second collaboration audiobook I’ve borrowed and read from my library.  I got into it because of my buddy Michael Connelly.  If you read my previous review that I just posted, you’ll know that maybe he’s not my buddy after all, but Harry Bosch is.  Conveniently, Harry is in this book! The wording on Goodreads calls this “an unprecedented collaboration”, which sounds very grand.  I didn’t really get it until I looked at all the authors involved and listened to the intro.  Apparently […]

Does Crime Pay?

Boss of Bosses: The Fall of the Godfather: The FBI and Paul Castellano by Andris Kurins and Joseph F. O'Brien

Sacred by Dennis Lehane

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I hadn’t meant to review these books together but I finished Sacred sooner than I anticipated and it just makes sense to cover them both in one review…   Boss of Bosses I just finished rewatching The Godfather in honor of its 50th anniversary and I decided to tackle this one because the agents applied the movie title as a sobriquet for Paul Castellano, the mob boss of the Gambino crime family who is perhaps most famous as being the guy in John Gotti’s way that got killed in […]

The Movie Was Better

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

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So this book was okay, but the ending was a letdown especially since when you think about things in a logical way you realize that what was really going on was pretty dumb. The book drags a lot too. The movie managed to move things along quickly with a lot of great imagery. Lehane in this book though makes you go over and over things and you quickly get tired of the investigation. It’s not until the final reveal of things that the book gets […]



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