Giles Blunt

DELICATE STORM - Giles Blunt

Author Information
Book Title: 
Delicate Storm
Author Name: 
Giles Blunt
Author's Home Country: 
Canada
ISBN: 
0007115741
Categorisation
Category: 
Crime Fiction
Sub Genre: 
Police Procedural
Location: 
Canada
Publisher: 
Random House
Year of Publication: 
2003

During the third week of January, the town of Algonquin Bay in Ontario experiences a freak warm front.  There is a thick fog blanketing the area pushing up the temperature and bears are coming out of hibernation.  When a mechanic discovers a mauled arm in the snow, the first assumption is that someone has fallen victim to a very hungry bear.

Book Review: 

For someone from a climate as mild as Australia, the cold of a Canadian winter seems somewhat exotic.  Salting the roads, ice storms, bears coming out of hibernation when there’s a warm snap, are all vividly depicted.  Giles Blunt imparts a strong feeling of  being connected to the community by the clever use of minor characters: there is WUDKY, the world's dumbest criminal; the veteran police officer returning from vacation and remembering a detail from an old case which helps create a lead in a current one and Cardinal's tetchy and fiercely independent father are just a few.  Cardinal and Delorme with their different ethnic backgrounds, attitudes and histories also give THE DELICATE STORM a strong and distinctive Canadian flavour.

Blunt has created a mystery with a number of intriguing threads and combined it with  interesting characters who pull you into the story and hold you there.

Giles Blunt grew up in Ontario.  THE DELICATE STORM is the second of four books in the John Cardinal series.  Blunt’s website is http://www.gilesblunt.com/

FIELDS OF GRIEF, THE (US Title: BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS) - Giles Blunt

Author Information
Book Title: 
The Fields of Grief
By The Time You Read This
Author Name: 
Giles Blunt
Author's Home Country: 
Canada
ISBN: 
0007151381
Series: 
John Cardinal
Categorisation
Category: 
Crime Fiction
Publisher: 
Harper Collins
Year of Publication: 
2006
Book Review: 

John Cardinal is a detective in the small police force, in Algonquin Bay, Ontario a small rural town in Canada. The local mayor keeps reporting his wife missing, when everybody else in town knows exactly what she's up to. Rather than just try to convince the poor delusional husband what's really going on, Cardinal is sitting in a car, with the mayor, outside the local motel, when there's a call over the radio about a body.
 
As Cardinal pulls up outside the location, a part of him is wondering about the car that looks just like his wife's and a part of him is wondering why somebody would die outside a mostly uninhabited, new building in Algonquin Bay.
 
Cardinal's wife, Catherine, is a photographer who has had problems most of her life with manic depression . She's been in and out of hospital, but she's been regularly taking her medication and when she was heading out earlier in the night with cameras, there'd been nothing in her manner that caused her husband any concern.
 
But it's her at the foot of that building, and there's a suicide note.
 
The opening few chapters of THE FIELDS OF GRIEF are heartbreaking. Cardinal struggles to understand why his wife has killed herself, and he just can't bring himself to believe that she has. That she'd stood in front of him only a few hours earlier and he hadn't picked up anything in her manner or her behaviour that indicated what she was about to do. The coroner thinks it was suicide, Cardinal's companions think it was suicide, John Cardinal can't agree.
 
A young man heads into a local laundromat, shotgun in hand and despite new CID member, Larry Burke's best efforts to talk him out of it, puts the shotgun to his head and kills himself. It's Fall in Algonquin Bay, the place is at its most beautiful. Suicide's sometimes happen there, but if they do, they happen in the dead of Winter, not in Autumn.
 
Detective Lise Delorme has her own confrontational problem. Graphic photos of a young girl being sexually abused have been discovered and the backgrounds of the photos show that some of the abuse occurred in Algonquin Bay. She's trying to track down the victim and the perpetrator.
 
Slowly a connection between the victims appears and somebody who should be trying to help vulnerable, sad and damaged people, is even more damaged. The problem is Cardinal knows that there's something a lot more to his wife's supposed suicide, but what is it? When he knows what it is, is there really anything he can do about it?
 
THE FIELDS OF GRIEF is a raw study in grief: Cardinal's reactions to his wife's suicide, his daughter's feelings about her mother. The mother and sister of the young man in the Laundromat, the reactions of Larry and Lise are all so different. It's also a shocking portrayal of what happens when the helper needs help. Deeply affecting and very compelling: highly recommended.
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