Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


Auf Wiedersehen, Old Friend

Metropolis by Philip Kerr

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The last week or so, I’ve written in different outlets about the impact Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series has had on my reading journey and personal life. While acknowledging the many faults of these books, I love them in a special way. I think Kerr is great at capturing atmosphere and cynicism to produce some truly great crime reading. “Nazi Noir” is a burgeoning genre now but Kerr’s Gunther works were really the trendsetter. Knowing this would be the last one following Kerr’s untimely death, […]

Apologies to whoever sat next to me while I read this

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

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The Library at Mount Char is a strange book. Sometimes it’s really interesting and suspenseful; other times, it’s horrific (as in horror literature, not general quality). The thing is, at least for me, is that the two don’t quite mesh together. The general story follows Caroline and Steve, who apparently has some kind of criminal past but now lives a quiet life as a plumber. He meets Caroline who seems a little off but who offers him an unusual amount of money to help her […]

When It Feels Like It’s Getting Late, I Will Reveal You

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

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As much as I love mysteries, I’ve never really gotten into the classics of the genre. I read And Then There Were None at far too young an age and it scared the absolute crap out of me–that was it for Agatha Christie, up until a few months ago when there was a Kindle sale on Murder on the Orient Express. I read it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Hercule Poirot’s mannerisms tickled me, and I loved the big cast and the bottle episode feel of […]

Said the Spider to the Fly…

By a Spider's Thread by Laura Lippman

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I honestly don’t have much to say here except that I really enjoyed this updated look at Tess’s life. She is still suffering some aftershocks after the events in the last book. Having to kill someone or she would be killed left a hole in her. She and her boyfriend are living apart since she feels like he is trying to “fix” her and keep her safe. She is back to rowing and doing investigations again. Her uncle brings her a new client who is […]

A Lady Unlike Any Other

A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas

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4.5 stars I keep struggling to summarise the plot in a good way, so I’ll just let the blurb do it: With her inquisitive mind, Charlotte Holmes has never felt comfortable with the demureness expected of the fairer sex in upper class society. But even she never thought that she would become a social pariah, an outcast fending for herself on the mean streets of London.  When the city is struck by a trio of unexpected deaths and suspicion falls on her sister and her […]

Eat the Rich

Murder at the Savoy by Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö

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Going into reading this series, I knew Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö were avowed socialists who wrote these books in large parts as a critique of inequality in Sweden. But while their beliefs do sneak out from time-to-time, they generally ground their mysteries in the tradition of a police procedural as opposed to pedagogy cloaked in mystery drag. That goes out the window with Murder at the Savoy, which is about as didactic of a book as I’ve read from them. There’s no question about it […]



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