The Dark Half by Stephen King (CBR-V #45)

Cannonball Read V: Book #45/52
Published: 1989
Pages: 469

Genre: Crime/Horror

Thad is a writer who didn't have much success until he wrote a series under a pseudonym, George Stark. After his success with the George Stark books, Thad decided to "kill" Stark and try his luck once again under his own name. Then people connected to Thad start getting murdered by someone who looks and acts suspiciously like the fictional George Stark. Is Stark a real person or just a figment of Thad's imagination? 

The Dark Half is more of a crime/mystery type book than Stephen King's usual horror. He does throw in some of his trademark supernatural elements though. As usual, King is great at creating characters, but I just couldn't get into this storyline as much as most of his books. It sort of dragged on in parts and the whole thing with the sparrows was just sort of bizarre. 


There's only a handful of Stephen King books that I haven't read yet and this was one of them. I can finally check it off my list, but it definitely wasn't my favorite. 

Freedomland by Richard Price (CBR-IV #44)

Cannonball Read IV: Book #44/52
Published: 1998
Pages: 736
Genre: Crime/Thriller

A friend recommended this book to me years ago, but I never got around to picking it up. I found it in a used book store a few weeks ago and decided to give it a try. 

The premise is pretty simple for such a long book: A white woman (Brenda) wanders into an emergency room with bloody hands saying that she was carjacked by a black man in a mostly black neighborhood. Then she tells the cops that her four-year-old son was in the back of the car. This sets off a long string of events that causes a huge racial conflict between the black neighborhood (Dempsey) and the neighboring white town (Gannon) that Brenda lives in (and her brother is a cop in). 

Lorenzo Council is the Dempsey cop that is working on her case. He starts a search for the little boy while trying to get more information out of a near comatose Brenda. Something about her is "off", but he can't quite figure out what it is.

I thought that Freedomland was a little long. Some parts when off on tangents that went for pages and pages. I mean we find out what happened to the little boy and there's still TWO HUNDRED more pages! I thought for sure that meant it was just a red herring, but nope. Just 200 more pages.  It definitely could have been condensed.

However, I did watch the movie they made based off the book that came out in 2006 with Julianne Moore and Samuel L. Jackson. It wasn't nearly as good. When the storyline was condensed like it was for the movie, it's very bland. You don't get the same feel for the characters and you don't get the creeping dread that builds up while reading the novel. So, in that sense I understand the length of the novel a little better. It seems slow at times WHILE you're reading, but after you finish you realize it was worth it.

Oh, and I never did get why the title is "Freedomland". The abandoned theme park they visit is called "Freedomtown". There is a passing reference to Freedomtown being based off a larger theme park in New York called Freedomland, but otherwise it is never mentioned nor visited (the book takes place in New Jersey). 

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (CBR-III #27)

Cannonball Read III: Book #27/52
Published: 2005
Pages: 480 (11,865 total so far)
Genre: Thriller/Crime

This is probably one of the best crime-solving books I've read since Silence of the Lambs. I normally don't go for the crime genre, but this book has gotten such good reviews that I decided to give it a try.

I actually almost gave up after the first couple of chapters due to the dull corporate investigative journalism storyline going on. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why people seemed to love this book. I decided to give it a few more chapters and all of a sudden, I couldn't put it down.

Finally, the real story starts as Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander start investigating the mysterious disappearance of Harriet Vanger more than 30 years ago. Mikael is a journalist who was just successfully sued for libel and pretty much lost all credibility when he gets a strange offer from an elderly, wealthy man named Henrik Vanger. Harriet was Henrik's niece and he wants Mikael to spend the next year working on solving her disappearance (or murder, as Henrik believes).

Eventually, computer hacker/private investigator Lisbeth joins him on the case. Lisbeth is an interesting character. She's definitely got some sort of sordid past that is merely alluded to, but she's tough and good at her job. She was probably more of a minor character than I expected (especially considering the book is pretty much named after her) and I would have liked to see more of her.

I'm really glad I stuck with the book. I had no idea where the story was going to go and was definitely thrown for some loops. This book really stood well on it's own, so I'm not sure yet if I'll pick up the other two books in the series.