Cannonball Read 12

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Suspense Is Killing

Hipster Death Rattle by Richie Narvaez

A Touch of Death by Charles Williams

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I finished two different crime novels over the last couple of days, one written by a  novice, the other by a legend, both really good in their own respective ways. Hipster Death Rattle I’ve become more familiar with north Brooklyn the last couple of months and boy, does Richie Narvaez know ever corner and haunt. A delightful skewering of hipster culture set right in the middle of Williamsburg, Gentrification’s Ground Zero, the book is as much a satire as it is a mystery. Some of […]

This Time, It Stuck

City of Margins by William Boyle

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This is the third William Boyle book I’ve tried. I still can’t get past the first 50 pages of Gravesend, as I found the characters to be uninteresting. The Lonely Witness was enjoyable enough but kind of a mess. Boyle, like George Pelecanos, writes character-driven crime tales that focus on their distinct urban neighborhoods. I always feel like I should enjoy both of their books more than I do. They always feel like I’m dropping in the middle episode of a well-produced television show that I’m unfamiliar with. […]

The Losers

The Alcoholics by Jim Thompson

Miami Purity by Vicki Hendricks

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I knocked out two quickie noir tales yesterday, both about sad sacks trying to get through life. One I liked way more than the other. The Alcoholics Jim Thompson 2 stars The Year of Jim Thompson continues with one of his more forgettable works. The New York Review of Books described it as “satire with a bludgeon” and I suppose that’s true because I felt bludgeoned by this one. If you like your satire this heavy handed, this one may work. But it didn’t for me. […]

Anchors Away

Home Is The Sailor by Day Keene

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Christa Faust is one of my favorite writers and I came to her work via Hard Case Crime. In an interview with her, I read that she got started on crime fiction by reading Day Keene. I wasn’t too familiar with Keene but I knew I had his Home Is The Sailor book in my HCC collection. It was low on my priority list but it shot up after the interview and now, I figured it was time to get to it. It’s your typical pulp fare […]

Angel In Disguise

The Black Angel by Cornell Woolrich

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Welp…you can check Cornell Woolrich’s name off the list of great Golden Age noir writers I have yet to read. It took me way too long. What I found most interesting about The Black Angel was Woolrich’s style. I don’t know what I expected, perhaps something more hardboiled or with a benighted prose. But he doesn’t write like that, at least for this one. Woolrich is a smooth writer, not prone to overwriting or making his characters sound like Oxford-by-Brooklyn the way some of his contemporaries did […]



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