Seven Oaks Magazine.

The Detective John Cardinal Mystery Series, by Giles Blunt (Random House Canada)

If you’re already a fan of Giles Blunt then you’ll be pleased to hear that his latest novel, By the Time You Read This (2006), measures up to his previous high standards.

Blunt manipulates plot as deftly as his villains wield their dastardly weapons, but without straying into the harsh territory of the “hard-boiled” – a genre that tends to degenerate into an endless litany of gratuitous violence.

By the Time You Read This is the fourth novel in the Detective John Cardinal mystery series, and if you are an enthusiast of Ian Rankin but haven’t yet sampled any of Giles Blunt’s outstanding police procedurals, then I highly recommend that you give them a try. They’re just the thing to keep you entertained while you await the release of Rankin’s latest title. Just substitute northern Ontario for Edinburgh, weather for whiskey, Lise Delorme for Siobhan Clarke, daughter Kelly for daughter Samantha, great plot and dialogue for great plot and dialogue; et, voilà, John Rebus becomes John Cardinal, an Algonquin Bay (think North Bay) detective with financial difficulties and a manic-depressive wife.

Start first with the brilliantly titled Forty Words for Sorrow (2000). Blunt casts winter as a central character in this page-turner that earned him the prestigious British Crime Writers’ Macallan Silver Dagger Award and probably owes some of its inspiration to the despicable duo of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka.

Second in the series (and my own personal favourite) is the Arthur Ellis Award-winning The Delicate Storm (2003), where the author continues to use winter to great effect – culminating in the destructive splendour of a massive ice storm. The plot involves two seemingly unrelated present-day murders, meddling intelligence agencies, and the unpunished perpetrators of a political kidnapping during the 1970 October Crisis in Quebec (that closely resembles the real life experience of British diplomat James Cross). Meanwhile, Cardinal’s father is dying, and the detective also faces the imminent disclosure of his own larcenous secret. This latter dilemma, which plagued Cardinal throughout Forty Words for Sorrow, as well, is cleverly resolved thanks to the intervention of a local criminal so inept that he scribbles a hold-up demand on the back of one of his own arrest warrants.

In his third novel, Blunt leaves winter behind. It’s summer, a.k.a. Blackfly Season (2005), and John Cardinal’s life is abuzz with the threat of mayhem and misfortune as his wife’s bipolar condition reasserts itself and biker gangs clash in the wilderness.

In By the Time You Read This – his latest offering – it’s autumn (the only tolerable season in the harsh climate of Northern Ontario, according to Blunt); but despite the pleasant temperatures and the vibrantly coloured forests, Cardinal’s wife, Catherine, finally succumbs to the tyranny of recurrent depression and commits suicide – or so it appears to everyone except her distraught husband. Notwithstanding the existence of an authenticated suicide note, Cardinal becomes convinced that Catherine was murdered. His colleagues and even his daughter worry that he’s come unhinged, but Cardinal perseveres. Meanwhile, his co-worker Lise Delorme is working a child pornography case. The victim of this repugnant crime, whose prepubescent degradation is polluting the internet, is now a vulnerable teenager teetering on the brink of suicide – and Catherine’s killer is egging her on.

As for the future of this series . . . ? Well, now that Catherine’s out of the way, perhaps in the books to come we can look forward to further sparks between Cardinal and Delorme.