Henry Holt © 2007, 352 pages [amazon]

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.

[INSET TEXT: 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.] 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 genuine page-turner.

Tags: book reviews, books, Giles Blunt, Detective John Cardinal, police procedurals