Finished: The Delicate Storm by Giles Blunt, 2003, 0399148655.
Another book I ended up with and forgot why. This has a Quebec separatist angle to it and I assume that is why I reserved it.
Northern Ontario cop Cardinal works for Algonquin Bay PD. He hears from a drunken and idiotic crook about a murder in the woods. Cardinal checks it out - with little expectation - and finds nothing. But, a body partially eaten by bears is found in the woods during an unusual midwinter thaw. Cardinal and his French-Canadian partner Delorme get the case. Things happen.
Cardinal worries over a crook coming up on release who wants the few thousand bucks Cardinal took about 15 years ago when working for Toronto PD. Cardinal's father is in poor health. Delorme catches the missing person case of a doctor which turns to a murder case. CSIS (Canadian federal intelligence) gets involved in bear mauled body. CSIS agent purposely misleads and Cardinal finds out. Cardinal digs and finds out true identity of dead guy and his CIA background during a violent secessionist movement in Quebec in 1970. Cardinal and Delorme head to Montreal. More things happen. Cardinal and Delorme keep digging until finding out the killer. Cardinal and Delorme connect the bear body, dead doctor, and a 12-year-old murder. Cardinal has no solid proof. Suspect knows it. Suspect disappears rather than wait for evidence.
Comments:
1. Good book. Blunt uses the weather, Cardinal's personal problems, French vs. English, Quebec secessionists, etc. to good effect.
2. This is the second in a series featuring Cardinal.
3. Blunt pays attention to interior settings. He refers back to the setting and how it reflects the people's situation and action. Abandoned trapper cabin in woods. The fancy furnishings of the RCMP in Montreal. Cardinal and other detectives dealing with a plastic wrapped squad room during renovations and repairs. Cardinal's house as a refuge for neighbors when power goes out. The broken down, rural house in Quebec of a former cop.
4. Well done as a police procedural with Cardinal and Delorme digging, running into dead-ends, so on, so forth.
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1 comment:
I've read the first four books in the Cardinal series and enjoyed all of them. More than many series, this is definitely best read in order since relationships grow and change quite realistically throughout the series. As you say, it is striking how much the weather is a major factor in all of the books.
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