Cannonball Read 11

Sticking it to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

More Marlowe

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler

by Leave a Comment

“Organized crime is just the dirty side of the sharp dollar.” “What’s the clean side?” “I never saw it. Let’s have a drink.” If quotes like that excite you, and you tend to view the world through a haze of cigarette smoke and gimlet fog, then this book could very well be for you. The Long Goodbye is Raymond Chandler’s sixth novel featuring the jaded private dick with a heart of…silver, Philip Marlowe. It’s not the best in the series, but it’s towards the top. For my money The Lady in the Lake and The Big Sleep in the lead spots. […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "More Marlowe"

8/16/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:29 |

Civil War Noir

De Niro's Game by Rawi Hage

by Leave a Comment

Shortlisted for Canada’s biggest literary award, the Giller Prize, I’d heard a lot about DeNiro’s Game, in particular how it was the first novel for its author, Rawi Hage (Lainey Gossip would call him a First Book Bitch).  The novel tells the story of two childhood best friends, Bassam and George, who are living in Beirut in the 1980s civil war.  Written first-person from Bassam’s perspective, we watch the two young men take different paths, and respond in different ways, to the chaos engulfing their country.  The book is split into 3 sections, with the first two sections taking place […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "Civil War Noir"

7/23/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:25 |

Allow, if you’re still alive, six to eight years to arrive

Sunburn by Laura Lippman

by Leave a Comment

There’s something about a noir novel with the word ‘sun’ in its title. It’s coming to me now. Wait. It’s almost there. … Nope, it’s gone now. Anyway. It’s 1994. Two attractive strangers walk into a sleepy Delaware town. She is Polly, a redhead with a sunburn, who has just left her husband and three year old daughter; he is Adam, a PI, looking for a woman once known as Pauline. They meet in the town’s only bar. She finds work as a waitress, he as a cook. They fall in love. There’s an apartment with an iron bed and […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "Allow, if you’re still alive, six to eight years to arrive"

5/27/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:15 |

Psycho Killer, Qu’est-ce que c’est?

In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes

by Leave a Comment

Dorothy B. Hughes was a popular crime writer of the 1940s and 1950s, perhaps the best female crime writer of her day and, based on the prose and psychological complexity on display in this slim volume, very much the equal of her better-known male peers. A very perceptive afterword written by the mystery novelist Megan Abbot does a better job elucidating the feminist aspects of the book than I could hope to, so let me just say that In A Lonely Place is a necessary corrective to any reader who thinks of noir as a boys’ club. Hughes’s novel centers […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "Psycho Killer, Qu’est-ce que c’est?"

4/24/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:10 |

Luke Cage meets noir meets The Diviners meets more please!

Abbott by Saladin Ahmed, Sami Kivelä

by Leave a Comment

Abbott is a brief, five-issue series set in 1970s Detroit about journalist Elena Abbott, lone black female reporter at the Detroit Daily. Abbott prefers to delve into the stories the paper’s board would rather not see printed. She’s recently getting heat for her piece on the death of a black teen at the hands of police, but so far she’s been protected by her loyal boss. She has a new case on the horizon and it’s a grisly one.  A mutilated police horse is found and the Detroit PD claims the crime stinks of the Black Panthers.  As Elena digs […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

  • Abbott by Saladin Ahmed, Sami Kivelä

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "Luke Cage meets noir meets The Diviners meets more please!"

3/13/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:19 |

“Why had my life suddenly become a Nancy Drew mystery from hell?”

Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys: The Big Lie by Anthony Del Col

by Leave a Comment

Review title is a quote from Rachel Hawkins’ Demonglass This book is like comic book fan fiction from my 8th grade brain. But more violent, and less me-as-Bess-kissing-a-cute-Frank-Hardy. Imagine the writers of Riverdale picked a different universe to focus their melodramatic musings on. Imagine that world was the pivotal Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys super mysteries, when it seemed like maybe they were trying to do a Christopher Pike thing? (For the record, The Nancy Drew Files were my favorite version.) But imagine instead of leaning into weird paranormal nonsense, they leaned into more of a 1940s gritty noir mystery but still […]

Help Support Cannonball Read

Buy the following on Amazon and help our mission to stick it to cancer, one book at a time:

We pay for our website first, and then all proceeds above and beyond those fees are donated to the American Cancer Society in AlabamaPink's name. Find out how else you can help support our mission.

Share the post "“Why had my life suddenly become a Nancy Drew mystery from hell?”"

2/7/2019 | 's CBR11 Review No:11 |

The Review and the Review

The City and the City by China Miéville

by 7 Comments

This is my first ever double-review! I have borrowed the wonderful extra brain that is my friend Amy. We met briefly in England and now she’s in Georgia and I’m in Denmark. We’ve read the same book and then I’ve bombarded her with loads of questions in an effort to ensure that she’d do most of the work, because well Amy’s brilliant and I love hearing what she thinks. I, of course, stole these questions shamelessly from the internet so there is nothing original about anything in my side of this review. I answered some questions as well, trying to […]

Share the post "The Review and the Review"

11/12/2018 's CBR10 Review No:40 |

Greatness

LA Confidential by James Ellroy

by Leave a Comment

Read for CBR10Bingo: Book was better. The movie is one of my all-time favorites. This is my first time reading the novel. I’ve read five James Ellroy books in the last few months so if you want my thoughts on my personal evolution towards his works, check past reviews. Having read the tail end of his work and the beginning of what made him popular, I can say with confidence this is the best book he’s written. It’s the perfect merger of his style and capability. I knew the book would be substantially different than the movie, as the latter […]

Share the post "Greatness"

10/16/2018 's CBR10 Review No:34 |


Shop on Amazon and Support CBR

Buy Original Cannonballer Prisco's book and help CBR!

Ad Partner