[.ca] Forty Words For Sorrow (Unabr.) (7 Cass.) (ISBN 1587885859)

From Amazon.com:
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. 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. 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). 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. 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." 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. --Kelly Flynn

Yes it is North Bay!!:
I haunted the same streets of North Bay as did the author at about the same age and time. For me, reading this book was like going home...but what a place. Far less interesting things happened in our home town and for Giles to turn the place into the fictional Algonquin Bay is amazing. His writing (and note..this was his second novel...not his first) is tight, the characters believeable (and angst-ridden) and the story line interesting without being far-fetched. I enjoyed immensely this book and can't wait to read the new one.

Excellent read:
A terrific book, superbly paced, with vivid and complex characters, and detailed police work. This is the first in a series of spine-chilling thrillers featuring detective John Cardinal. I loved it.

What A Chiller:
This thriller is set in the bleak winter of Canada's Algonquin Bay. The weather serves to act as a mirror of the mood of the local police force after they discover a body out on the bay. We are introduced to Detective John Cardinal who, we learn, had been obsessed with a number of cases of missing youths. Cardinal was sure the cases were related and could turn out to be more than just missing persons. His superiors disagreed and ended up taking him off the cases. When a body is found, it looks as though it could be one of the missing people, so Cardinal is rushed back onto the case again. The greatest fear of the Algonquin Police Department could actually be reality - they may have a serial killer in the city. When Cardinal is reassigned to work the homicide, he is also given a new partner. Lise Delorme has come straight from Special Operations to help out on the case and, unknown to Cardinal, is secretly investigating him thinking he may have been tipping off a known criminal in return for payoffs. Around halfway through the book we are introduced to the killer and get an insight into his world. The pace of the book suddenly steps up a notch as the two storylines begin to run in parallel to one another, comparing Cardinal's progress in the investigation with the actual focus of his attention. Tension is heightened by allowing us to be privy to the killer's identity, particularly when he takes a new victim. The case then turns into a race against time. I found this to be an excellent thriller combining a tight storyline and methodical detective work with a strong sub-plot that threatens to unravel the whole investigation. The uncertainty provided by this sub-plot was very effective in creating doubt in the reader's mind as to what the outcome could possibly be.

Baby, its cold outside:
... let me emphasize that this spine- (and whole body) chilling book takes place in the *fictional* town of Algonquin Bay, Ontario, CA. I suspect, though, that like Ed McBain's Isola and others, the name is a fictionalized nomer for a real place: North Bay, eh? I further suspect that the villains herein are fictional spawn of Canada's gruesome twosome Bernardo/ Homolka. Giles Blount's first novel is a "captive"ating tale of the evil some men (and women) do. And the US reader learns something of Canadian Law Enforcement along the way. Are they referring to Notre Dame football? The Apocalypse? No. The "Horsemen" to which they refer, in a non-deferential tone, are the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Police procedural:
O Canada, your Ontario setting was the only good thing in this novel. Everything else was... well, blunt. Come on, Canadians; the stereotype is that you're rather witty - act like it! (D)