Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Knives Out

A Stab in the Dark by Lawrence Block

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Made a recent commitment to make my way through Lawrence Block’s Matthew Scudder series. I found the first three enjoyable enough for passing the time but mostly unmemorable. This was the first one that really moved me. And that’s surprising because the crime itself is based on a mystery trope I hate: slashed women/murdered women/serial killer. When I saw the plot for A Stab in the Dark, I audibly groaned. I can’t stand books like that and I rarely read them. Had I not already been […]

Cult Fandom

Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg

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I knew going in this wouldn’t be a conventional mystery novel but I was still impressed at how well William Hjortsberg followed the traditional tenets of what constitute a hard boiled novel. For about 90% of the book, this reads like a decent PI tale. And though I found the cult aspects to be boring and the reveal to be predictable, I still enjoyed the writing. This is a book that wastes no space. There are 48 chapters and each one exists to move the […]

…in which love and Mormonism bore a part.

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

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CBR11 BINGO: Classics (BINGO! Youth square to Banned square) FINALLY! I know that I am so amazingly late to this party, but here I am. I missed the CBR Book Club reading of this. I have read the Lady Sherlock Series (Sherry Thomas) and the AMAZING The Affair of the Mysterious Letter (Alexis Hall) re-tellings. I watched the PBS show and the RDJ movies but never read any ACTUAL Sherlock Holmes stories or novels. Now I have. Ta-da! As I suspected, the bulk of the book was about Sherlock and his crazy mind. […]

Dreams, They Will Come and They Will Go

The Brass Rainbow by Dennis Lynds/Michael Collins

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My Kindle Unlimited subscription expires this week, which is kind of disappointing because that’s how  I’ve discovered Dennis Lynds’ (aka Michael Collins’) Dan Fortune series. These books are so much fun. And because they never found new life the way many old school pulp writers did through Black Lizard or Mysterious Press, they’re difficult to find in stores. I can get ’em from the library but it’s not the same as having another series to hunt for in used book palaces. At any rate, this […]

Toby Daye and the selkies

The Unkindest Tide by Seanan McGuire

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Spoiler warning! This is book 13 in a series, and really not the place to start. The first book is Rosemary and Rue, that’s where you want to begin, if you’re interested. Official book description: Hundreds of years ago, the Selkies made a deal with the sea witch: they would have the sea for as long as she allowed it, and when the time came, she would call in all their debts at once. Many people assumed that day would never come. Those people were wrong. When […]

To see her is to love her

Sapphire Flames by Ilona Andrews

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4.5 stars This is the first book in a new trilogy, so it will work fine to anyone new to the authors or this fantasy world, but readers may want to have read at least Diamond Fire, a novella which introduces the heroine and bridges the completed trilogy and this new one. In a world where magical abilities bring wealth, power and possibly even fame, Catalina Baylor has reluctantly become the head of House Baylor and the main investigator of her family’s detective agency, after her […]



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