Blackfly Season

It has been awhile since I have read a book I couldn't put down -- or at least hated to put down, even for a minute. "Black Fly Season" by Canadian writer Giles Blunt is such a book.

The opening chapter is a gem. It's black fly season in Algonguin Bay, a city located a couple hundred miles north of Toronto, and there's a redheaded young woman in The World Tavern who has obviously gotten more than a few bites. She moves good-naturedly from table to table, seemingly unconcerned about those bites. A law officer happens to be there, and he becomes concerned when he learns the woman has no idea who she is or where she lives. In fact, she can't remember much of anything. She is taken to a hospital, where they find two bullets in her brain. show more Someone had tried to kill her and left her for dead.

Soon two bodies are found, one of them shot with the same gun, and police detective John Cardinal and his partner, Lise Delorme, suspect they have a serial killer on their hands.

Readers learn who the killers are -- there are two of them -- long before Cardinal and Delorme do, making "Black Fly Season" less a mystery and more a suspense thriller. It involves drug traffic and a form of voodoo more common in Cuba than Canada.

The book also has an interesting subplot involving Cardinal's wife, Catherine, a manic-depressive who reaches a crisis point just as her husband's murder case reaches its crisis point.

Giles Blunt is a fine writer, and I think I'll be looking for some of his other novels. show less

It would have been far more appropriate to have read this mystery earlier in the season in, say, Blackfly Season. And it would have been far more appropriate to have read it in closer proximity to the first two books in this series (which began with Forty Words for Sorrow and continued with The Delicate Storm). But I wholly enjoyed all the inappropriate choices I've made in reading this in a cool and bright September, nearly eight years after I read the second John Cardinal and Lise Delorme mystery.In fact, I enjoyed it so much, that I'm now reading the fourth in the series. A major element of the appeal is the Algonquin Bay setting, but the reason I'm still reading on? The relationships between the characters: I'm hooked

This book was recently made into a TV miniseries called Cardinal which just concluded on CTV. I decided to read the book in stages after each program was aired so that the plot would not be revealed until after I saw the TV version. As usual, I thought the written version was much better but the TV show is cinematically great.

Detective John Cardinal works for the Algonquin Bay Police Force. He and his partner, Lise Delorme, are called into the hospital when a red-haired young woman is brought in with a gunshot wound in her head. Due to brain damage caused by the bullet she cannot remember who she is or who shot her. She has no identification and there are no missing persons reports which match her description. As Cardinal and Delorme show more work on her case a mutilated dead body turns up. The victim was a member of a local biker gang who have a reputation for controlling the drug trade in the area. It seems that an outsider is infiltrating the drug trade and the biker was killed to obtain the gang's stash. But his hands, feet and head were removed and the cave where he was found was covered in strange hieroglyphics. The gunshot victim might be another casualty of the same interloper and Cardinal and Delorme are hoping that as she regains her memory she will tell them where to find him.

There are some substantial differences between the book and the TV show and I don't think that all the changes were necessary. If you have watched the TV show, do yourself a favour and read this book. show less

This is the third book in his police procedural series, and Giles Blunt has offered up a page-turning thriller that involves drugs, murder, biker gangs and a witness with amnesia caused by being shot in the head. Cardinal and Delorme are working on this difficult case and at the same time battling the multitudes of black flies that make being outdoors in Northern Ontario a misery in the month of May.

I enjoy the Canadian setting of these books, as the fictional town of Algonquin Bay substitutes for North Bay, Ontario, and I find the characters are mostly well developed and interesting to read about. He has captured the feel of a smaller, northern town and the historical details about the military bases not having the same importance as show more in the days of the Cold War certainly rang true. I would however, like to see both the main characters developed a little more, especially Lise Delorme. She was very much present in the story, but had no character growth to speak of. The author does seem to have a great deal of knowledge regarding police procedures and the cooperation that is required from city, provincial and RCMP forces.

I fully intend to read on into this series and I am looking forward to seeing where Blunt takes Cardinal and Delorme next. show less

Detectives Cardinal and Delorme are dedicated to protecting the folks of Algonquin Bay, Canada. That is how Cardinal is able to function when his wife, Catherine suffers mental health crises every few years. Despite being tired and drained from watching over his wife, he works hard to find the bad guys and prevent more deaths.

Black Fly Season is about the havoc drugs wreak on communities, gangs, excellent teamwork, and brilliant scientists pulling all the forensic clues together.

Good read.

A beautiful redheaded girl shows up in a Tavern in Algonquin Bay acting rather strangely and covered with black fly bites and leaves. She has no memory of who she is or what happened, but they discover she has a bullet in her brain. The bullet is removed, but homicide detectives John Cardinal and Lisa Delorme assume she is in danger, and try to protect her. She suddenly regains the memory of who she is, but still doesn't remember the shooting. She also doesn't give full information to the police such as she was visiting her brother, a drug addict because she doesn't want to get in in trouble. However, two murders are discovered and she keeps going out. Then she disappears. The plot is mixed up with drug trafficers, a motorcycle gang, show more and a central American shaman. show less

The third in the Cardinal/Delorme detective series set in Algonquin Bay (read "North Bay") in northern Ontario. Good suspense, with further developments in Cardinal's personal life. Another reviewer of Blunt's work mentioned a tendency for the bad guys, rather than Cardinal and Delorme, to be at the center of the narrative. I took a better look at that in this story and it's true. There's little mystery as to who the bad guys are, so the suspense is how much damage they'll be able to do before stopped. The reader is kept at a greater distance this way, and in this book, especially, Delorme is practically a cipher. Cardinal's "inner workings" are more visible, but no where near as much as the criminals. I have to say that the show more descriptions of the massive black fly invasion brings back a lot of memories of a vacation I took years ago at a Quebec lake, where the flies were late and I was early: pure misery. Well-done and looking forward to #4. show less