By the Time You Read This

Published in the UK under the title Fields of Grief

John Cardinal, a small-town policeman, seems pretty run-of-the mill, like his community. Algonquin Bay sits on a lake, surrounded by Northern Ontario rocky forests. There are the usual little crimes and petty injustices to deal with. One night, however, while on the discomforting task of exposing an adultery situation, John is called to an accident scene. A woman has fallen from a new high rise. Or was she pushed? Or did she jump? This is of particular importance to John, because it turns out the woman is his wife, Catherine.

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 show more 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. show less

I think this is the best John Cardinal book so far. And that’s saying quite a bit because Giles Blunt’s previous three books in this series have won awards and commendations. CTV has made two of the books into TV shows and I think this book has been given the same treatment and will be shown in the fall of 2018. But for me this one shows John Cardinal at his lowest ebb and he still retains his investigative acumen and his humanity.
Readers of this series know that John Cardinal is a police detective living in Algonquin Bay with his wife Catherine. Catherine is a gifted photographer but she struggles with manic depression which results in regular hospitalizations. At the beginning of this book Catherine’s body is found at the base show more of a newly constructed high rise by a patrolman. The patrolman can find no identification so it is not his fault that Cardinal is the detective first called to the scene. A suicide note is found on the roof and the death is ruled a suicide. Cardinal has a hard time accepting this finding because Catherine seemed to be stable when the two of them had supper together just a few hours before. He talks to everyone else who had dealings with Catherine shortly before her death. No one saw anything concerning; even her psychiatrist says “Here I am, someone with whom Catherine has been discussing her emotional life in detail for nearly a year and I didn’t see it coming.” The psychiatrist, Dr. Bell, is something of a specialist in depression so this should make Cardinal feel less guilty but something still doesn’t seem right to him. Meanwhile his sometime partner, Lise Delorme, is trying to track down a young girl whose image is on the internet being sexually abused. The background in one of the pictures shows the marina in Algonquin Bay so the OPP have asked Lise to investigate. Since Cardinal is not taking advantage of his bereavement leave he agrees to help Lise while also carrying on his own investigation into Catherine’s death.
Both these cases involve people in a position of trust victimizing vulnerable people. I can’t think of a more disturbing circumstance for commission of a crime. And yet it is all too common. show less

WARNING: This review contains spoilers.

****

Easily Giles Blunt's best work to date, By the Time You Read This is a beautiful and moving story, not to mention a deftly plotted and compelling mystery. It begins with a devastating event -- a suicide at a new apartment building, where a woman has fallen from the roof. The woman turns out to be Detective John Cardinal's wife, Catherine, who has long struggled with depression. There is even a suicide note on the roof, a note that begins "By the time you read this, I will have hurt you beyond all forgiveness..." Cardinal cannot imagine why his wife would commit suicide now, of all times, just when she seemed enthusiastic about her latest photography project and was showing none of the usual show more signs that she was depressed.

The first few chapters thus deal with Catherine's funeral and Cardinal's coming to terms with her death. These were among the hardest chapters to read, because Cardinal's pain was palpable and his love for his wife very real, or at least as real as fictional characters can be.

The other major case in this book is a child pornography case assigned to Detective Lise Delorme. The Toronto sex crimes unit has found a stash of child porn and believes that one of the victims is from Algonquin Bay, where this story takes place. Her task is to track down the child and attempt to find the child's abuser. Once the abuser is introduced to the reader, we are subjected to chilling descriptions of what he did to the child in question. Blunt does not shy away from sensitive subjects like sexual abuse, and those sections were also very difficult to read, but for different reasons than the chapters concerning Cardinal's grief and Catherine's death. Both parts evoked despair and sadness, but the parts about Catherine at least had the memories of how happy Cardinal had been. With the sexual abuse scenes, there was also horror at a loss of innocence, and disgust that anyone would take advantage of an innocent child that way.

This story in turn intersects with that of the "wave of suicides" that has been occurring and of which Catherine seems to be a part. Or are things what they seem? Did she really end her life, or was she killed? Cardinal is determined to find out.

This is an excellent story, and I recommend it highly. Blunt's storylines intersect neatly with each other, and he shifts between them enough to hold your interest and to keep the pace from sagging. The "twist" regarding the wave of suicides may have happened a tad early, but it was revealed brilliantly, and the knowledge that the reader had cast a more sinister light on the proceedings that followed. It was not something I could have predicted, but it wasn't impossible, either. Actually, it was all too possible, at least in my opinion.

I borrowed this book from the library, but I wouldn't object to buying a copy for myself, despite knowing how the case pans out. The writing is that great and the story is that wonderful. Deeply sad, yes, but there is hope -- and none of that maudlin stuff either. If you haven't started with Blunt yet, do choose this work. show less

The assumed suicide that turns out not to be a suicide at all has become something of a cliche in murder mysteries, yet there is nothing in "By the Time You Read This" by Giles Blunt that reads like something you've read before. The suicide in this 2006 novel happens to be that of Catherine, the beloved, manic-depressive wife of Detective John Cardinal of the Algonquin Bay Police Department in Canada. If you have read earlier stories in the series you will know Catherine has been in and out of hospitals because of her severe depression. Yet at other times she is a gifted photographer and a loving wife and mother.

When her body is found to have fallen from a tall building where she was taking pictures at night and a suicide note in her show more handwriting is found as well, the conclusion seems obvious. Yet Cardinal, though he is placed on leave, won't let it rest. He discovers the suicide note was written weeks before Catherine's death and bears someone's fingerprints other than her own.

Meanwhile Sgt. Lisa Delorme, one of Cardinal's colleagues on the force, is assigned to a child pornography case. Evidence suggests the photographs were taken in the Algonquin Bay area. Amazingly, the pornography case and Catherine's apparent suicide have a thin connection to one another.

This novel by the Canadian author, whose books are not as readily available in the U.S. as I would like, makes riveting reading from beginning to end, which is somewhat surprising in that Blunt, unlike most mystery writers, gives the surprises away early. Readers know what happened and who's responsible long before Cardinal and Delorme do. Yet revealing the killer at the beginning of each episode never prevented Columbo from becoming one of the most popular TV detectives ever. Perhaps Giles Blunt is a fan. show less

The fourth in the Cardinal/Delorme detective series set in northern Ontario, and easily the most emotionally difficult to read. Two main themes permeate the story: suicide and long-term child molestation by a beloved family member. The physical details are not particularly graphic in description, but the emotional toll on the victims and their families affect the reader enormously. This is especially true of the descriptions of family grief following suicide, a young victim's dread and confusion during years of rape, and the horror of watching a predator leisurely plan for a new conquest after the first child has grown too old for him. This book is heart-breaking in many ways and truly depressed me. But, and this is a big but, for show more readers of the series this is a must-read because what happens here is integral to the lives of the main characters. (And for that reason, a reader new to the series should not start here.)

Blunt's descriptions of the bad guys' motives often bore me, and that's true here, too, except for the chilling portrayal of the child molester. All-in-all, this is probably the best of the series to date because of its emotional impact, but I do think that if Blunt would keep his attention on the cops he'd have more cohesive and dramatic stories - and perhaps a commercial hit series on his hands. show less

Two reasons to read this - it's a great book, and there's a great one sentence description of why people watch soaps, on page 169 which alone justifies the price of the book. Blunt's 4th in the series, and his best. Case revolves around Police Det. Cardinal's wife's battle with depression, and it's denouement. Enlightening descriptions of psychiatrist-patient therapy sessions, and how words can be twisted and used as a weapon of manipulation. Dialogue sizzles throughout. Also a top-notch sub-plot involving child sexual abuse, and its lasting impacts on victims. A strong case is made for the legal differentiations between those who pull a trigger nd those who manipulate their victims over the brink. The end result is the same, but the show more punishments are not. The only negative in this book (and the others) for me is the Cardinal - Lise relationship. There is no tension, no sustained attraction, no buzz between these two. Once soda goes flat, it's dead. This relationship is dead. I hope I don't see an effort to raise it from the romance grave. show less

This is the fourth mystery in the Algonquin Bay series with John Cardinal and Lise Delorme.
It's a superb crime novel, an intense emotional experience for the reader, and a compelling mystery. In the previous novel "Blackfly Season", Detective Cardinal was somewhat sidetracked from the case because of his anxiety over his wife Catherine, a manic-depressive who was rapidly becoming unstable, and eventually had to be hospitalized. His anguish at witnessing her pain, and his powerlessness to help her, were beautifully portrayed in that book. (Spoiler warning...) Here we have the devastating follow through, as a seemingly content Catherine goes out to take some photographs, and Cardinal finds her broken body at the base of a tall apartment show more building, along with a suicide note. His grief is overwhelming, and he is driven to know more about how and why she died, beginning to suspect that she may have been murdered by a vengeful criminal. While Cardinal investigates the closed case alone, his partner Lise Delorme is searching for the victim in a child pornography case, a young girl who has been assaulted for years by a family member. Both cases are deeply disturbing crimes, with more than one victim, and the reader feels an intense need to keep turning the pages to see the perpetrators brought to justice.
Highly recommended. show less