Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


I couldn’t put it down

Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley

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CBR Bingo: Gateway (favorite genre: Mystery) I love a good mystery, and this is a good mystery. I was surprised, actually, by how much I enjoyed this since typically this kind of hardboiled, seedy-underbelly, protagonist has seen some shit mysteries aren’t the type of mystery I go for. Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins is a WWII vet living in LA in the late 40s, down on his luck, who is approached by a man offering a lot of money if Easy can find a woman who’s gone […]

Been There, Doing That Again

Rose Gold by Walter Mosley

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Read as part of CBR13Bingo: Old Series. The Easy Rawlins series debuted in 1990. As the times change, Walter Mosley has changed his most famous creation with them. He’s also changed his style. I don’t know if it’s for better or worse but I like it. I’ve written on his Leonid McGill series about how Mosley has incorporated some surrealist existentialism into those works and how they felt different to what he had written before. These don’t read like McGill books but they do have […]

“It felt strange. I was about to read one murder mystery while sitting inside another.”

Moonflower Murders (Susan Ryeland, #2) by Anthony Horowitz

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What a fun, twisty (not so) little whodunnit. I was skeptical about this one, because it seemed on the surface like it would just be the same thing all over again, when the resolution of the first book would seem to make that impossible. But he made it work! I should have trusted. This is a 600-ish page book that I read feverishly in about two days one weekend in July. Some spoilers for book one below; you have been warned. We return to former […]

“I wondered what it was like to live without that weight on your shoulders, the weight of the murdered ancestors, the stolen land, the abused children, the burden every Native person carries.” #CBRBINGO – Fauna

Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

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Virgil Wounded Horse is an enforcer on the Rosebud reservation, the home of the Lakota in South Dakota. Due to some fucked up laws, felonies are subject to federal prosecution, and the feds refuse to prosecute many serious crimes on the reservation, leaving murders, rapes, you name it, uninvestigated. The residents turn to Virgil. For some extra cash, he’ll give the perpetrator a beat down, oftentimes a very violent one. Vigilante justice is more reliable than the so-called justice of white people. The plot kicks […]

Davy Jones Locker

Dixie City Jam by James Lee Burke

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Read as part of CBR13Bingo: Machine. The book revolves around a missing Nazi sub sunk in the Louisiana Gulf Coast as a MacGuffin.  Sigh. Every Dave Robicheaux novel will feature things that will both delight and frustrate me… The good… -Some wonderful descriptions of south Louisiana atmosphere, both weather and culture. You really feel like your transported to the place but not in a gratuitous way. -A few True Detective-esque reflections on the nature of life and crime that’ll take my breath away and keep me […]

A little history, a little mystery

A Deadly Penance: A Templar Knight Mystery by Maureen Ash

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The Templar Knight Mysteries are set around 1200 AD in England and feature a sleuth named Bascot de Marins, a Templar Knight who has seen action in the Holy Land, lost an eye, and acquired a mute sidekick named Gianni. I suspect that more of Bascot’s background was revealed in previous mysteries, but the reader can enjoy this one without necessarily going back to read the previous stories. Bascot is 40-ish, still fit, and a man who cares deeply for the less fortunate. He has […]



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