Cannonball Read 13

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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The Searcher by Tana French

The Searcher by Tana French

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Reading Tana French makes me want to go to Ireland. Her Ireland feels like a much more complex and textured place than I’ve seen represented in more romantic representations.  However, after reading The Searcher, it strikes me as not the wisest choice for an American to up and move to the Irish countryside.  That’s precisely what Cal Hooper has done. Cal is a retired Chicago police detective, and he takes his nest egg to Ireland to buy a run-down old home in a small, quiet […]

“Cal feels like he ought to stand on a street corner handing out warnings, little pieces of paper that just say: Anyone could do anything.”

The Searcher by Tana French

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TANA FRENCH TANA FRENCH TANA FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEENCH. I LOVE TANA FREEEEEENCH. Since I learned of Tana French, the Dublin murder series has been one of my number one recommended book series to anyone who asks (or ya know, stands nearby too long quietly, and thus gets accosted by my recommendation). I typically sum it up with “If you like Law and Order SVU you’ll like her and her books” but am not sure that is fair to French, more so that’s me casting a wide net […]

The Players and the Game

The Rage by Gene Kerrigan

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This is billed for fans of The Wire and I totally get that. I always think that Wire-like books are ones similar to George Pelecanos novels, books I admire more than enjoy. This is one such work. There is a lot to admire about this one. Gene Kerrigan’s prose is smooth and he definitely understands Recession Era Ireland. I got a good sense of what happened over there and how it affected everyone from the moneymakers to the lower class. The set ups to all of the crimes […]

Binge

The Blackbird by Richard Stark

Dead Connection by Alafair Burke

The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black

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Anytime I finish a tome (in this case, Don DeLillo’s Underworld), I tend to binge read in order to get back in the swing of things. Here are three books I picked up over the weekend… The Blackbird *** Someone asked on Twitter recently that if you could take three traits from a writer for yourself, what would they be? I should have mentioned Donald Westlake’s amazing versatility. Just consider the Grofield series: first a heist tale, then a locked room mystery, now a spy thriller, […]

If 28 Days Later and The Road had a daughter

The Last Ones Left Alive by Sarah Davis-Goff

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This was Round 2 of my ongoing “what’s going in in the world of Irish science fiction?” quest. (Round 1 was here.) First off: great title, no? I was instantly intrigued, especially with the description, and I liked this weird sense I was getting of the post-apocalypse as a site of feminist possibility rather than just endless misogyny and threatened sexual violence. (Sigh.) The premise is straightforward: Orpen lives with her mother and her mother’s partner, Maeve, on an isolated island off the coast of […]



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