false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172215283m/150447.jpg 150447 23 <blockquote>It gets dark early in Algonquin Bay. Take a drive up Airport Hill at four o' clock on a February afternoon, and when you come back half an hour later the streets of the city will glitter below you in the dark like so many runways. The forty-sixth parallel may not be all that far north; you can be much farther north and still be in the United States, and even London, England, is a few degrees closer to the North Pole. But this is Ontario, Canada, we're talking about, and Algonquin Bay in February is the very definition of winter. Algonquin Bay is snowbound, Algonquin Bay is quiet, Algonquin Bay is very, very cold.</blockquote> Read the evocative opening of Giles Blunt's novel and you may begin to understand why Tony Hillerman says this is the novel he wishes he'd written. Keep reading, and you may wonder why other authors haven't joined the vicarious narrative line. With devastating precision, Blunt effortlessly weaves together strands of lives both led and taken in this tiny Canadian town, limning a hauntingly paradoxical picture of isolation and community, two sides of a fragile bulwark against violence.<p> John Cardinal was taken off homicide investigation after a fruitless and expensive quest for 13-year-old Katie Pine, a Chippewa girl who disappeared from the nearby reservation. After months of insisting that Katie was no runaway, Cardinal receives the cold comfort of vindication in the form of Katie's corpse, discovered in an abandoned mine shaft. But the case, when reopened, becomes a Pandora's box of horror. Katie's body is only the first to be found, as Cardinal uncovers a pattern that links her death to those of two other children. When another boy is reported missing, Cardinal knows he is in a race against time to find the killer (so trite a phrase, while technically accurate, does radical injustice to Blunt's razor-sharp plot and eerily pragmatic balance between the cop and his prey).<p> His new partner, Lise Delorme, is trying to uncover her own pattern. Drafted by the RCMP to find proof that Cardinal has been accepting money from drug runner Kyle Corbett to derail the Mounties' investigations (three attempted busts good for absolutely nothing), she sifts through the minutiae of Cardinal's life. Proud father, loving husband, dedicated officer--at what price has this edifice been constructed? Suffice it to say that Cardinal's past and present link him in ironic counterpoint to those people for whom he is inevitably the bearer of bad tidings, leaving them "trying to recognize each other through the smoke and ashes" of grief.<p> Blunt has created a world in which every conversation can seem as ominous as the moan of the wind and the bullet-like report of shifting lake ice ("It was a new art form for Delorme, picking shards of fact from the exposed hearts of the bereaved. She looked at Cardinal for help, but he said nothing. He thought, "Get used to it."). But it is also a world whose bleak landscape is touched with unexpected humor. Witness this description of one of the many minor, but always beautifully detailed, characters who populate the novel's pages: "Arthur 'Woody' Wood was not in the burglary business to enhance his social life. Like all professional burglars, he went to great lengths to avoid meeting people on the job. At other times, well, Woody was as sociable as the next fellow." <p> Part police procedural, part psychological thriller, part exploration of a region's landscape and people, the novel is an astonishing, powerful hybrid-- worthy of far more than a mere 40 words of praise. <I>--Kelly Flynn</I> 2669572 2000 Forty Words for Sorrow total:156|5:32|4:76|3:34|2:11|1:3| 156 591 232 31 4 1 false false Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Wed Jan 23 10:29:23 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 23 10:29:23 -0800 2008
Giles Blunt first came to the attention of critics everywhere as a staff writer for Law and Order, one of the strongest television series in history. And when reading Blunt's first novel, the reader who is a Law and Order fan is likely to...more...]]> 0 0 false false Tue May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Jan 11 15:58:49 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 11 15:59:58 -0800 2009 Cassette book purchased from audioeditions.com.
This is my first Giles Blunt book, and as soon as more are available in audio, it definitely won’t be my last. John Cardinal is a policeman in Ontario who had trouble in Toronto, so moved to a v...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Feb 08 08:47:16 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 08 08:56:07 -0800 2009
Forty Words for Sorrow is your standard serial-murder-in-small-town. What makes i...more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jul 21 07:22:04 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 21 07:35:14 -0700 2009
I ...more...]]> 2 0 false false Fri Mar 06 12:21:50 -0800 2009 Fri Mar 06 12:23:36 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Nov 16 00:00:00 -0800 2000 Sat Aug 22 08:52:45 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 22 08:54:35 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Tue May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Feb 02 07:56:44 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 02 07:59:01 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Mon Oct 15 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Feb 12 09:10:11 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 12 09:14:12 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Thu Apr 16 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed May 27 05:13:44 -0700 2009 Wed May 27 05:18:23 -0700 2009 2 4 0 false false Thu Sep 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 11 19:22:33 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 11 19:30:20 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Mon Mar 02 11:05:18 -0800 2009 Mon Mar 02 11:06:54 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Fri Jun 29 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Wed Feb 04 04:36:17 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 04 04:36:40 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Wed Apr 08 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Apr 11 08:06:38 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 16 05:27:11 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 22 00:34:41 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 22 00:35:52 -0700 2009 Not bad, but not great. Just average read. While he tried, characters did not have much real emotional connection.]]> 5 0 false false Thu Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 22 14:54:53 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 22 14:56:14 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Tue Jun 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 10 06:01:22 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 10 06:04:39 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sat Apr 04 10:16:07 -0700 2009 Sat Apr 04 10:17:06 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Tue Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Tue May 08 18:14:55 -0700 2007 Sat Jul 14 18:17:44 -0700 2007 more...]]> 1 0 false false Thu Sep 06 00:00:00 -0700 2001 Tue May 06 18:22:44 -0700 2008 Tue May 06 18:23:34 -0700 2008 Kiss the Girls and I hated that book. It ceased to be a mystery about a hundred pages into the book when the author decided to give us a ringside seat at the murderers place. And this child killer likes to audio tape and then videotape his brutal murders. Descrip...more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Apr 26 14:23:04 -0700 2007 Thu May 24 18:14:52 -0700 2007 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=150447