Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

You know how you can make it up to me? MURDER

The Bridesmaid by Ruth Rendell

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3.5 stars I’ve read and enjoyed quite a few books by Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine, so this caught my eye. Philip is an absolutely run-of-the-mill man: decent looking, recently out of college, working in a field he pretty much likes and with dreams of bigger things, living with his mom and sister, just out of a relationship because he wasn’t ready to/couldn’t commit as fully as his ladyfriend wanted him to. You know, regular guy. His relationships with his mom and two sisters — all of […]

Have you ever thought of books as “small flattish boxes… packed with mystery and threat”?

A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell

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“Eunice Parchman killed the Coverdale family because she could not read or write.” I have to say, I found it weird that Ruth Rendell would start a murder mystery by eliminating the mystery in the very first sentence. It’s been a while since I read any Rendell, but I have always found her murder mysteries to be absorbing and unsettling, which is where the fun is. One would never describe her mysteries as “cozy.” The fact that we readers know the who and the why […]

Words, madmoiselle, are only the outer clothing of ideas.

The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie

Shake Hands Forever by Ruth Rendell

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The ABC Murders – 4/5 Stars This is a great Agatha Christie novel. It’s from 1936 and it’s one of the earliest detective novels I’ve read that tackles the idea of serial killers, pattern killers etc. Hercule Poirot is called out in a letter challenging him to a kind of mental duel. A killer tells him the location of an upcoming murder and challenges him to stop him. Poirot and Captain Hastings take on the challenge with different mindsets. The first murder is a woman, […]

People are different in reality from the way you’ve seen them while making scenarios in your mind.

The Water's Lovely by Ruth Rendell

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This book feels like it could have been written in that last year or so. There’s nothing particularly newish about it, and certainly nothing that particularly ages it either. But what I mean is that it feels like someone more or less cashing in on #metoo in some ways, but because it’s not and because it’s not vulgar in its representation, it actually shows a kind of prescience about toxic masculinity and sexual violence. I guess people should have been listening. This is also an […]



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