Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Search This Site

> FAQ Home
> Tag: Val McDermid

Blood of Scotland

A Distant Echo by Val McDermid

by Leave a Comment

It’s crystal clear that I need to read more Val McDermid. A Place of Execution was one of the best things I read in 2021, but I consistently punt on her books. I finally bought 1979with some Christmas money after returning it three times to the library unfinished. I don’t know why, don’t ask me to explain it. She’s very good. Like the other one I read, this is a character driven crime novel with a mystery that’s resolved in a textured way. There are […]

“News always reached Miss Marple, one way or another.”

Marple: Twelve New Stories by Various

by Leave a Comment

I would read more of these Agatha Christie short story collections featuring notable authors, for sure. Even the ones where Americans tried and failed to capture that British Marple feeling were entertaining in their failure. But most of these stories were pretty successful! One nailed it completely. Highlights for me were the stories from Ruth Ware (I know!), Naomi Alderman, Elly Griffiths, Kate Mosse, and Leigh Bardugo. This may be the easy way out, but I’ve just copied and pasted my Goodreads status update mini-reviews […]

Celia knew a bad place when she saw it.

The Butterfly Girl by Rene Denfield

Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints.... by Val McDermid

Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie

by Leave a Comment

Sometimes my reading comes in clusters. The cluster here is leftover audiobooks and books around the house before I permanently delete them or donate them! Quarantine house cleaning!! The Butterfly Girl 2/5 Stars – This is the second of the Naomi Cottle series. Naomi is a former abducted child with the uncanny ability to find missing, lost, and abducted children. In the previous book she reconnected with a former friend from childhood and formed a relationship with him. In this book, that partnership is at […]

The British Countryside Mystery

A Place of Execution by Val McDermid

by 1 Comment

For years, I held out on reading Val McDermid until I could find this book. I can’t remember where it was first recommended to me but it was often billed as the best of her illustrious career. It probably sat on my primary Amazon list for close to two years. Trips to bookstores proved fruitless. Until one day, I stumbled on it for sale at my local library’s book sale. Yay for libraries and their book sales! Even after I got it, it’s probably been […]

A delightful Austen novel made into a delightful Austen adaptation

Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid

by 3 Comments

Finally, I am all caught up with The Austen Project! There really are no excuses for me to put off The Lizzie Bennet Diaries now. Ahem. Anyway, I went into Northanger Abbey with high hopes, because I genuinely like the original sooooo much. I did my Master’s Thesis on the two film adaptations (the 1980s film is suuuuper campy and not all that great, the 2007 film is deliciously aces and full of female sexual empowerment in ways that Jane Austen would totally approve of […]

I’m not sure how Jane would feel about all of the Twilight references.

Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid

by 1 Comment

Until a few weeks ago (mentioned in ElCicco’s great review of Eligible), I hadn’t heard of The Austen Project. The gist of the project is to take Jane Austen’s novels, choose current authors, and have them modernize the story. And now I’m obsessed with making may way through all of the books rewritten thus far…I’ve already read Alexander McCall Smith’s Emma, and am on the library list for both Eligible and Joanna Trollope’s Sense & Sensibility. But I was lucky enough to find a copy of Val […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo