THE DELICATE STORM - Softcover

Blunt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007115784 ISBN 13: 9780007115785

Publisher: Harper, 2011

Synopsis

Stylish, atmospheric psychological thriller following on from the Silver Dagger Award winner, Forty Words for Sorrow.

A gruesome discovery in the wilderness above Algonquin Bay leads detectives John Cardinal and Lisa Delorme to a remote cabin that has served as an abattoir for a cold-blooded killer...

But the woods hide other horrors and soon a second body is discovered, naked and shrouded in ice. When one of the victims is identified as an American the Mounties have to be called in, but it's the Canadian Secret Service that arouses the most mistrust. Is their interference due to a suspected terrorist link, or is there something even more sinister behind it?

With Northern Ontario in the grip of an ice storm of once-in-a-hundred years severity, the woods take on a glittering, lethal beauty. And in this winter wonderland John Cardinal must hunt down and confront a killer.

About this title

Review:

In The Delicate Storm, it's January in the northern Ontario town of Algonquin Bay, and the foul smell of murder permeates the chilly air when the remains of a bear's dinner in the woods turns out to be the body of an American tourist with a shadowy past. Time for Detective John Cardinal to track down the scent. The mystery deepens when another corpse, that of local doctor Winter Cates, is discovered in the same woods, and Cardinal suspects a link. Unearthing the connection takes Cardinal back to a very different time and place: Montreal circa 1970, a city gripped by the fear of separatist violence. A single incident from that era turns out to have deadly repercussions in Algonquin Bay 30 years later.

Giles Blunt's first thriller to feature John Cardinal, Forty Words for Sorrow, was an international hit, which earned Blunt the British Crime Writers' Macallan Silver Dagger Award. With The Delicate Storm, Blunt delivers another imaginative and entertaining mystery. The author honed his craft writing scripts for such popular TV crime series as Law and Order and Street Legal, and his tight plotting is neatly complemented by a vivid yet never overly extravagant writing style. His depictions of the political scenes of both Quebec in the 70s and contemporary Ontario are fascinating (he shows a deep contempt for his novel's neo-conservative Ontario premier, Geoff Mantis, who bears a striking resemblance to a recent real-life premier from Blunt's hometown of North Bay). He is less successful when exploring the sexual tension between Cardinal and colleague Lise Delorme. Creating a plumbing problem in a hotel so they must share a room is just a little forced.

Toward the end of The Delicate Storm, the author explains how to avoid being electrocuted by downed power lines. That makes it a book that could literally save your life. Failing that, The Delicate Storm is certain to provide you with hours of pleasurable reading. --Kerry Doole, Amazon.ca

Review:

Praise for Forty Words for Sorrow

‘Extraordinary for its psychology and tensions. Giles Blunt manages to inhabit the minds of killer, victim and investigator alike, a feat that very few writers can manage. It moves his work to a different level’ Jane Jakeman, Independent

‘A taut and enthralling tale that is as dark as the Canadian winter setting is cold. Humane, intelligent and gripping, Forty Words for Sorrow is a haunting journey into the human heart in all its complexities’ Val McDermid

‘This Canadian novel is as fine a police procedural as any written in the USA and doesn’t rely on others for ideas – it comes across as fresh as morning dew ... never less than fascinating throughout’ Mark Timlin, Independent on Sunday

‘A highly professional tour-de-force: excellently plotted, with fleshed-out characters and a well-portrayed, interesting setting’ TJ Binyon, Evening Standard

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0007115784
• ISBN 13: 9780007115785
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480