Giles Blunt, Forty Words for Sorrow (Berkeley, 2001)Giles Blunt first came to the attention of critics everywhere as a staff writer for Law and Order, one of the strongest television series in history. And when reading Blunt's first novel, the reader who is a Law and Order fan is likely to know, even without knowing Blunt's allegiance to the show, that there are similarities. Needless to say, for the Law and Order fan, this means you've pretty much got a free pass on this one; you're going to love it.John Cardinal is a cop with his career in the toilet and a clinically depressed wife. His usual partner is tied up in court on another case, so Cardinal is assigned another one, Lise Delorme, who's just come to homicide from Special Bureau (Americans, think "internal affairs"). Cardinal, who some folks in the branch suspect of being crooked, immediately suspects she's been paired with him in order to investigate him. But he's got too much on his plate to spend much time worrying about that; first, his wife goes into the hospital with a particularly nasty bout of depression. Second, a body is found in a mineshaft, believed to be that of Katie Pine, a missing girl whom Cardinal always suspected of being murdered; his obsession with her case got him demoted from homicide in the first place. Who can worry about whether you're being investigated by your partner or not?Perhaps the most intriguing thing about Forty Words for Sorrow is the tension between Cardinal and Delorme, and trying to decide whether a romance is getting underway. The two of them are very deftly handled, and while they seesaw back and forth between being nice to one another and loathing one another, there's never a sense that anything is being exaggerated for the reader; the perils of having a new partner, and one of the opposite sex.That said, the best-written scenes in the book are those between Cardinal and his wife in the hospital. Cardinal is hopelessly adrift, completely unsure of how to handle himself around her as she struggles in the mire of her depression. Both characters are painted spot-on in these scenes, and they alone are enough to warrant the purchase price of the book.What's missing from the above two paragraphs is the mystery itself. And, ultimately, the mystery takes a back seat to the characters. This is not a bad thing, as long as the characters can sustain the novel (and they certainly do here). But the end result is that the mystery becomes somewhat predictable, especially for regular watchers of (you knew I'd get round to it sooner or later) Law and Order. The twists and turns in the plot will be easily recognizable to the show's rabid cult following. Again, not that this is a bad thing; in fact, regular Law and Order viewers have come to expect this, and will feel right at home. (Non-regular viewers, or those who have never seen the show, may not find anything here predictable at all.)A good, solid work, Forty Words for Sorrow, a promising debut from a promising writer. John Cardinal is coming back soon in Blunt's second novel, and if the first one is anything to go on, it will be just as well worth reading. *** ½
Kurzbeschreibung:In der klirrenden Kälte des kanadischen Winters wird in einem Minenschacht, festgefroren in einem Eisblock, die grausig zugerichtete Leiche eines Mädchens gefunden. Und in der Provinzstadt Algonquin Bay sind noch drei weitere Teenagerspurlos verschwunden. Detective John Cardinal glaubt, dass ein perverserSerienkiller sein Unwesen treibt. Doch die Wahrheit ist noch viel erschreckender ...Autor:Giles Blunt, geboren 1952, wuchs in North Bay in der kanadischen Provinz Ontario auf und studierte an der Universität Toronto Englische Literatur. 1980 ging er nach New York City, wo er sich zunächst als Streetworker, Gerichtsdiener und Barkeeper durchschlug. Heute lebt er wieder in Toronto und ist freier Schriftsteller und Drehbuchautor. "Gefrorene Seelen" war sein internationaler Durchbruch als Thrillerautor. Meine Meinung:Gefrorene Seelen spielt in Algonquin Bay, Kanada. Dort herrscht tiefster Winter. Im Februar ist es auch noch nicht sehr lang hell, so das Detective John Cardinal bereits Licht einschalten muss, als er seine Tochter zum Flughafen fährt. Auch froren die Scheiben relativ schnell wieder zu.Kaum wieder zu Hause angekommen wird Cardinal zu einem Fall gerufen. Es wurde eine Mädchenleiche gefunden, tiefgefroren in einen Eisblock. Versteckt in einem alten Bergschacht. Es stellt sich heraus das es sich um eine Vermisste handelt, welche bereits seit mehreren Monaten gesucht wurde.Als wenig später eine weitere Leiche gefunden wird, ist man sich sicher das es sich um den gleichen Täter handelt. Dieser wurde von der Presse bereits als Windigo-Mörder bezeichnet.Die Geschichte ist in 2 Handlungsstränge unterteilt. Einmal geht’s um die Suche des Mörders und der weiteren Vermissten. Hierbei begleiten wir Detective John Cardinal. Der zweite Handlungsstrang geht um die interne Ermittlung gegen Cardinal, da bei ihm der Verdacht der Korruption besteht. Diese Ermittlungen werden durch seine Kollegin Lise Delorme geführt.Die ersten 100 Seiten ungefähr waren nicht ganz so rasant, doch dann nahm das Ganze langsam Fahrt auf. Der oder die Täter waren auch relativ früh bekannt, da es von ihnen ebenfalls Abschnitte zu lesen gab. Grausam was dort so geplant wurde. Die Spannung wurde dennoch gut bei behalten.Gefrorene Seelen hat mir relativ gut gefallen. Der Schreibstil ließ sich für mich sehr gut und flüssig lesen. Die Handlungsstränge wurden alle zum Ende hin gut zusammen geführt.Der Autor Giles Blunt war mir bisher nicht bekannt. Gefrorene Seelen lag aber bereits eine Weile auf meinem SuB so das ich es nun endlich einmal gelesen habe. Ohne große Erwartungen ging ich ran, wurde aber auch nicht enttäuscht. Mittlerweile habe ich auch heraus gefunden das es hier weitere Bände um John Cardinal gibt. Gefrorene Seelen war als Fall jedoch in sich abgeschlossen.John Cardinal war als Hauptprotagonist auch sehr gut ausgearbeitet. Seine Gefühle kamen gut herüber. Gerade auch seine Gewissenbisse da er aus einem früheren Fall Geld mitgingen ließ oder auch die Sorgen um die Krankheit seiner geliebten Frau Catherine.Insgesamt bekommt Gefrorene Seelen von mir 4 Sterne.
What do You think about Forty Words For Sorrow (2005)?
Forty Words for Sorrow, by Giles Blunt, A. Cassette book purchased from audioeditions.com.This is my first Giles Blunt book, and as soon as more are available in audio, it definitely won’t be my last. John Cardinal is a policeman in Ontario who had trouble in Toronto, so moved to a very small town. I’ve already forgotten the name of the town. He’s not well liked by authority figures there either, and finally he is moved out of homicide altogether because he insists that an Indian girl, Katie Pine, who has disappeared, did not run away but might have been murdered. He was moved to burglary. When Katie’s body was found, the lieutenant in charge reluctantly moved him back to homicide, but was suspicious of him because every time they tried to bust a certain drug dealer, the raid fails. There was suspicion that he was alerting the dealer. After all, his wife needed expensive psychiatric care, and his daughter was in school at Harvard. So he was assigned a new partner, Lise Dilorm, who came from internal special investigations. The deal was that if she would investigate how the news was leaked about drug raids, she could move from special investigations into homicide where she wanted to go. John Cardinal was aware he was being investigated, or suspect it at least, but he and Lise worked together very well on what turned out to be a serial murder case where someone was kidnapping children, raping and torturing them, and then killing them in grotesque ways. Cardinal was very depressed about his wife’s continued illness and inability to be there for him. He thought, if Eskimos had forty words for snow, they or we ought to have forty words to describe sorrow. A wonderful book, well plotted.
—Kathleen Hagen
This book hooked me on the first page, with its description of just what winter is like in Algonquin Bay, Ontario, in what even Canadians call “the North.” John Cardinal is a police detective with a Past and a string of murders of adolescents to solve. His partner is Lise Delorme, six years in Special Investigations (i.e., political cases and what we in the U.S. would call Internal Affairs), whose assignment is to investigate Cardinal, as well as to help solve the murders. So far, so good. Blunt gets you into Cardinal’s mind, into the personality of this frozen little town, into the relationship between the local cops and the RCMP . . . and then he blows it completely. One-third of the way into the story, he tells you who the killer is. A serious error on the part of the author. What began as a potentially first-rate murder mystery degenerates into a mediocre thriller. At the two-thirds mark, I gave it up. A great disappointment!
—Michael K.
Rating: 3.75* of fiveThe Book Report: The first John Cardinal mystery, we're introduced to Detective Cardinal as he is reassigned to Homocide after being yanked into burglaries and other such unglamourous pursuits for daring to investigate the strange disappearances of several very young people in fictional Algonquin Bay, Ontario. The disappearees all have in common the fact they're run away before, not an unusual thing there in Algonquin Bay, which is a central exchange point for rail, bus, and highway travel for the whole country. Cardinal smells something wrong, though, and spends the town's resources too freely for his boss's comfort...until suddenly one of those disappearees turns up "all corpisfied and gross" (to quote a character on the late, lamented TV show Firefly). Cardinal is brought back to Homicide, with a new partner called Lise. She just happens to be on her first murder investigation, rewarded for her huge success in nailing a corrupt politician as the result of a special forensic accounting investigation.And spying on Cardinal for Internal Affairs. There's a pickle to be in: Spying on your popular partner to see if he really committed a crime some years back and, if so, to rat him out to persons possibly untrustworthy. Go Lise! Way to start a new life!Meanwhile, the author lets us in on the doings of the murderous in real time; feeds us clues to Cardinal's sad and stressful past and present; prefigures several inevitable moments in the pursuit of a sociopath; and blows up the entire power structure of the town. All comes out, surprisingly, better than the worst and not even all that bad.My Review: **WARNING: GRAPHIC AND HORRIFYING SADISTIC VIOLENCE** (The book, not the review.)This really shouldn't be marketed as a mystery. We know whodunit and whydunit. It's a chase thriller, and a good one. The violence warned of above is upsetting to me due to its victims being kids. In the end, Blunt's coolly presented, razor-edged prose and his vile, horrible imagination kept me awake and flopping from side to side in agonized suspense until I reached the end of the book. It was harrowing and horrible! I can't wait to read the next one!
—Richard Reviles Censorship Always in All Ways
