Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Love em and leave em until one dies

The Third Wife by Lisa Jewell

by Leave a Comment

Adrian’s third wife, Maya, dies by accident one night. She was wasted and fell into the path of a bus. While her death seems accidental, the fact she was uncharacteristically drunk at the time sticks in Adrian’s mind. About a year of mourning later, he decides that he must find a new owner for the cat Maya left behind and places ads around town. A mysterious woman shows up a couple times to meet the cat but ends up not taking the cat. Then the […]

Eastern Promises

The Dogs of Riga by Henning Mankell

by Leave a Comment

I’ve read three Henning Mankell books and each one has left me satisfied, like they are a step above the regular mystery read. I don’t know why I don’t do a deeper dive into his work. Dogs of Riga is another winner and it was inching towards a five-star rating before it fell apart in the last quarter. I’ll get to that. But let me begin by singing the praises of Henning Mankell. In this one, he has his main character spend most of his time […]

Murder Mysteries: Hercule Poirot > Miss Marple

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Nemesis by Agatha Christie

by 1 Comment

The ingenious website I Write Like has informed me on six separate occasions that my writing most resembles that of Agatha Christie, the best-selling author of all time, aside from Shakespeare and the Bible. Praise be! However, I have never read the First Lady of Mystery, as murders solved by someone other than Sherlock Holmes rarely appeal to me. Fortunately, on last week’s trip to the coast I came across Coalesce Bookstore, a shop packed to the rafters with volumes old and new. I left […]

Enough to Turn You Off True Crime

Two can Keep a Secret by Karen M. McManus

by 2 Comments

I didn’t like the two leads (Malcolm and Ellery) and the whole book really showcases why a lot of true crime fans like Ellery suck. They don’t really care about the victims of a crime, they just want to play amateur sleuths and think they can find the guilty party. That said, there was not really anything suspenseful in this read. I was bored from beginning to end. Even though this is a Young Adult mystery novel, the actual mystery part should make sense and […]

Standing Outside a Broken Phonebooth…

Down the River Unto the Sea by Walter Mosley

by 1 Comment

This is the first Walter Mosley book I’ve read that didn’t feature his famed detective Easy Rawlins. I liked it, with some reservations. We’re introduced to Joe King Oliver, a former NYPD detective who was framed and now has to make a living as a PI, trawling the streets of New York. Mosley’s Oliver is similar to Rawlins: a man who has been wronged yet has faults of his own. Mosley is quite good at making one feel sympathetic to his male protagonists while also […]

Cowboys Like Us…

The Final Country by James Crumley

by Leave a Comment

This book inspired the title for the seventh episode of this season’s True Detective. When I finally finished Dave Halberstam’s wonderful-but-exhausting The Best and the Brightest, I decided to pick it up since it was the latest Crumley in my stack. And it might be my favorite. I’ve always liked the Milo books more than the Sughrue ones. There’s really no difference between the two characters; they’re both old, gruff alky war vets who function as ancillaries for the author. But for whatever reason, the three Milo books […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo