By the Time You Read This

Don't often read mysterys set in Canada and written by a Canadian. Blunt has created a special place with his Algonquin Bay CID unit. Great read, easy to digest and remember the story line. The characters are fleshed out. I recommend his entire series.

Having recently read all of Giles Blunt's previous books featuring Cardinal and Delorme, I devoured this one in a single day. It's his best yet, with less of the overt evil and grisly detail of some of the earlier books, but even more of the superb character study and psychological insight. The evil in this book is subtler, and it's completely believable. Simply put, Blunt is a terrific writer. His prose is crisp and unfussy, yet still evocative and moving. He knows his setting thoroughly and recreates it so effectively that even if you've never been to his small Ontario city, you feel that you know it well too. His characters are vividly drawn and very real; I find myself thinking about Cardinal and Delorme after I've finished of the books, which is as much as you can ask from any writer.

John Cardinal and his wife Catherine live on a quiet street in Algonquin Bay, an idyllic, lakeshore community in Northern Ontario (and a stand-in for the author's real-life hometown of North Bay, Ontario). Cardinal is a detective with the Algonquin Bay police department. Catherine is a photographer and teaches at the local community college, and she is a manic depressive. The couple's happy, nearly thirty-year marriage has been punctuated by Catherine's hospitalizations for depression, but when the story starts she has been out of the hospital for a year--taking her medicine and seeing a psychiatrist regularly. Still, it hardly comes as a shock to most of Blunt's characters when Catherine turns up dead, an apparent suicide. Cardinal himself doesn't seriously question the coroner's finding on the matter until he receives an anonymous "sympathy" card gloating over her death. Other pieces of evidence--but nothing definitive--also begin to suggest that Catherine's death was not a suicide, and Cardinal, on leave from the department, investigates the matter quietly. Friends on the force assist him on the sly, though under orders not to waste police resources on a closed case. Other cases under active investigation compel more of their attention, however, and in fact wind up being connected to Catherine's death--though not in a way that readers are likely to anticipate. By the Time You Read This is Giles Blunt's fourth novel featuring Detective John Cardinal, though it's the first I've read in the series. The book reads like a standalone novel, which I mean as a compliment: I never felt like I was entering Cardinal's life mid-story; there were no awkward references to past cases thrown in to connect this installment up with previous books. The mystery of Catherine's death is not easily unraveled: the evidence Cardinal uncovers leads him to erroneous conclusions, and the reader is likely to be misled as well. Blunt's principal bad guy is an unusual character, with unusual motivations. His identity is revealed to us not quite halfway into the book, and when it comes the subtle revelation is downright chilling. Pausing to think about Blunt's villain after my manic rush to reach the end, I'm not sure that he's a realistic character, but I was certainly able to suspend disbelief long enough to finish the book. By the Time You Read This is a real page-turner. Debra Hamel -- author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece (Yale University Press, 2003)

If there's any justice in the reading world, then "By the Time You Read This" will get Giles Blunt some serious notice. That's because Blunt has topped himself in his fourth mystery novel involving John Cardinal and the fictional town of Algonquin Bay, with his darkly compelling writing, excellent characters, and a brilliantly harrowing finale. Cop John Cardinal is on a stakeout when he is called in to a suicide, a woman jumping off a building -- and it turns out to be his wife Catherine. Cardinal is devastated by her loss, but he starts to suspect that her death was not suicide when a series of cruel, taunting cards start arriving. His fellow cops (and Catherine's shrink) think he's just in denial, especially since a suicide note in Catherine's handwriting was found beside her body. Meanwhile detective Lise Delorme is investigating a child pornography case -- a series of photos of a man and a little girl -- and little details reveal that they were taken in Algonquin Bay. Meanwhile, Cardinal continues to find discrepancies in the supposed suicide, and as the clues slowly come together, he finds himself face to face with a killer who uses the most horrific weapon imaginable against his victims... "By the Time You Read This" is one of those rare books that successfully straddles the line between psychological horror and crime mysteries. Blunt does have a little awkwardness -- the beginning is strainedly poetic, and the end could have used a couple more chapters to wrap everything up -- but the bulk of the book is pure gold. Basically, Blunt is perfectly suited to mystery writing. His writing casts a dark, noirish light on everything, where everyone is untrustworthy and all sorts of nasty secrets simmer just under the surface. And he gives a gritty feeling to many of the scenes of copwork, but still manages to keep a tasteful, quiet approach to things like child pornography. His writing excellence shines in scenes like a young man's suicide, or Cardinal picking up the body of his wife. And the mystery itself uncoils gradually through the plot, dropping little hints along the way. The hints build up and up and up, until it becomes crystal clear who the killer is, and the way in which he's (almost) untraceably killing his victims. It's a brilliant idea. John Cardinal gets the rough treatment this time around, developing some obsessions and trying to deal with grief -- all the stages, from denial to painful acceptance. Delorme has a lot of the copwork in this book, and she's a solid character who really works at finding the little girl in the pictures. "By the Time You Read This" is a brilliant mystery, with only a bit of awkwardness at the beginning and end, but with a unique murderer and a twisty storyline. Definitely a great read.

This is a psycho-thriller that combines the depths of depression and loss with the sadistic world of child pornography. Catherine Cardinal is the wife of police officer John Cardinal and she has been treated for clinical depression for years. However, recently she seemed to have been making great progress towards recovery. She was seeing Dr. Frederick Bell and seemed poised to make significant advances in her photographic career. However, one night while taking some photographs from the roof of a building, she apparently jumps off. The pain is magnified when Cardinal is at the scene shortly after the body is discovered and cradles her dead form in his arms. For reasons he cannot explain, he questions the ruling of suicide, even though a suicide note written in her handwriting is found on the roof. Placed on grieving leave, he pursues the matter and begins to find some inconsistent features of the case. Trying desperately to maintain his professional detachment, he calls in several favors as he finds some clues but no clear direction. Lise DeLome is a female officer who is placed in charge of a child pornography investigation. Photos of a man sexually molesting a young girl have surfaced on the Internet and there is reason to believe that they originated in her jurisdiction. She manages to identify the marina where some of the photos were taken and when Cardinal returns to duty, he is also assigned to the case. In Cardinal's investigation, he discovers a plague of suicides, all of which were patients of Dr. Bell. However, since Bell treats some of the most serious cases of depression, while it is a red flag, it is one that can be explained. The simultaneous investigations proceed, leading to a convergent conclusion that is suspected early, but not confirmed until late. This book is truly a page-turner that had me riveted. It was only a few hours before my first class of the semester was to start and rather than preparing for class I was absorbing the last few pages of this story.