Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Matt Scudder – Nostalgic NYC Noir

When the Sacred Ginmill Closes by Lawrence Block

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My dad was a huge fan of the prolific author Lawrence Block. Block is best known for two series of books, one following ex NYC cop Matthew Scudder and his battles with alcohol and guilt, as well as a light-hearted series about the charming burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, who always seems to find himself on a job in a fabulous residence that also happens to contain a dead body. Most of the Scudder novels are included with my Audible subscription, so I have been enjoying revisiting […]

Murder in the marshes

Death of an Expert Witness by P.D. James

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Death of an Expert Witness feels like a classic P.D. James Dalgliesh novel- a forensic scientist with a lot of enemies is discovered murdered in the lab, and Dalgliesh is called in to find out whodunnit.  The setting for this Dalgliesh outing is a private forensic lab near the small town of Ely, which is 14 miles north of Cambridge.  Ely is part of England’s fenlands, which is a low-lying coastal plain similar to Holland.  James’ ability to tie her mysteries to her setting is […]

Murder, slow and detailed

The Black Tower by P.D. James

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P.D. James is an acquired taste in detective fiction- slow moving and meticulously detail oriented.  Her Adam Dalgliesh novels are a detour from some of the hard-boiled noir detective fiction that is currently fashionable on TV and film.  Adam is not like Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch or Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole; rather, Dalgliesh he is from the ‘gentleman detective working for Scotland Yard’ mold, slowly sifting through clues without breaking the rules. The Black Tower is the 5th Dalgliesh novel and it is set in […]

Stars Hollow meets the detective novel

Still Life by Louise Penny

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Still Life is the first Inspector Gamache novel in Louise Penny’s series, and for me it’s a backtrack- I started with the second novel, Dead Cold (alternate title: A Fatal Grace), back in February.  Still Life introduces us to all the main characters that show up in the later books, including the town of Three Pines and its close-knit community members.  (For such a quaint and friendly town, I get the feeling there are a lot murderers in Three Pines’ midst, if the length of […]

I Loved Laura, Except for . . .

Laura by Vera Caspary

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Another book from my personal challenge of reading the source material for favorite classic movies: Laura, by Vera Caspary. This book is a detective noir, as hard-boiled and cynical as any of the genre, but written by a woman. It was originally published, a la Dickens, as a serial, “Ring Twice for Laura,” in Colliers Magazine in 1942/43. The  classic film noir, starring Gene Tierney as Laura and Dana Andrews as a detective who finds himself falling in love with a dead woman as he […]

Bogart made it better

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

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The Maltese Falcon is a mystery novel classic- a 1929 knot on the detective fiction string that extends from Wilkie Collins through to Jo Nesbo and Ian Rankin.  It features all the things we’ve come to expect from the ‘hard-boiled’ sub-genre: a hard-drinking loner detective, a handful of quirky criminal thugs, some pushy cops, a beautiful but possibly duplicitous femme fatale.  Sam Spade is that detective, and he is trying to solve a mystery that builds around him with minimal clues but increasingly plentiful bodies. […]



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