Customer Reviews

By the Time You Read This

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After seeing all of the other reviews, I started to wonder if we all were talking about the same book? While the idea behind the novel was an excellent one, I'm used to fast paced thrillers--which this definitely was not! It took until the middle of the novel to even get around to what the book was about. And even after that it continued to plod toward the ending. The idea, while unique, was thinly plotted.

I do believe the author has talent. This is displayed in part by the complexity of the main characters, John Cardinal, Detective Delorme, and Dr. Bell. For these he gets 5 stars as they had depth, plausibility, and significance. However, John's wife Catherine was not very likeable and I wasn't certain why the author made her so distant and remote. I found it hard to care about her the way I did the other main characters.

I also found the subplot unconvincing as though it had been thrown in to give Delorme something to do and a way to bring John and her together. However, it was unpersuasive at best. For example, I found the way Blunt brought the child abuser's victim into a relationship with Dr. Bell was only a construct so that he could tie it back to Cardinal's discovery of Dr. Bell's involvement in his wife's "suicide". This was just too convenient. Delorme's investigation didn't seem to be well thought out, and therefore, it lacked credibility. I also did not think Delorme's investigation would have led her to the correct perpetrator given the details in the novel.

I think Blunt has a fine career ahead of him but this book did not rank with the many fine mystery novels I've read this year. I look forward to faster paced thrillers and I will read Blunt again, in the hopes that as he continues to write, his novels will mature with him.

For fans of Giles Blunt and his north woods detective John Cardinal, the apparent suicide of Cardinal's long suffering wife Catherine comes as no huge surprise. With Catherine having spent much of Blunt's three previous novels in and out of psychiatric wards, the crime scene investigators of Ontario's Algonquin Bay have little reason to suspect foul play in Catherine's fatal dive off a nine-story building. But the distraught Cardinal is not so sure, and embarks on a grief-ridden one-man crusade to get to the bottom of his wife's death.

There is no question that Blunt has talent, and "By the Time You Read This" starts with an intriguing premise set in this poignant backdrop. The author does a good job of capturing the pain of Cardinal and daughter Kelly without getting maudlin, and renders a credible portrait of Cardinal's dealings with his colleagues during this difficult time. Seemingly unconnected subplots involving a child pornography ring and the shotgun suicide of a local college student provide additional depth and deflect some focus from Cardinal's pain, and provide some context to keep detective Lise Delorme in the story. And Blunt adds finds some interesting new dimensions to add to the crime scene forensics. So far so good. But about halfway through the book, the plot starts showing some strain, and has thinned to the point that with nearly 100 pages left to go, the outcome, if unbelievable, is virtually inevitable. In setting up this complex and suspenseful thriller, it feels like Blunt got a few too many threads running in too many directions, and had to rush to reach a neat and tidy climax which instead felt forced, lacking the credibility promised in the opening chapters.

All in all, an average read from Blunt - better than "The Delicate Strom" but not up to the "Silence of the Lambs"-class depravity of "Forty Words for Sorrow", or the tightly wound "Blackfly Season". With the paperback due next month, you may want to wait for it and save a few bucks.

Giles Blunt, By the Time You Read This (Henry Holt, 2007)

Some years ago, I read Giles Blunt's breakout novel, Forty Words for Sorrow. It was enjoyable, but nothing terribly memorable; in my review, I likened it to the literary equivalent of a Law and Order episode. Well, here we are a few novels later, and it seems that Giles Blunt (who, it should be noted, was in fact a staff writer for Law and Order and other TV cop shows back in the early nineties) has gotten it figured out-- By the Time You Read This is a good'un.

John Cardinal and Lise Delorme return, this time to solve their toughest case-- the death of John's wife, which everyone (including John, sometimes) believes was a suicide. John uses his bereavement time to put together a case that his wife's death was, in fact, murder, while Lise finds herself embroiled with some particularly nasty child porn photos whose origins have been traced back to Algonquin Bay. Old characters return, new characters pop up, and all's right (or as right as it can be, given the situations everyone involved finds themselves in) with the world.

Blunt has done quite a job with this one. It's a bit slow to start, but once it finds its pace, it chugs along quite nicely. The characters are well-drawn and believable, the plot all fits together (if, in some spots, a bit too neatly; one aspect of By the Time You Read This falls into the world of mystery-novel-cliche, but to tell you which aspect would make for a major spoiler), and Blunt has a built-in plot twist that will keep you confused long after you think you've got the whole thing figured out. A good book, this. If you're a mystery fan and have not yet discovered Giles Blunt, perhaps now's the time to do so. *** ½

This is a psycho-thriller that combines the depths of depression and loss with the sadistic world of child pornography. Catherine Cardinal is the wife of police officer John Cardinal and she has been treated for clinical depression for years. However, recently she seemed to have been making great progress towards recovery. She was seeing Dr. Frederick Bell and seemed poised to make significant advances in her photographic career. However, one night while taking some photographs from the roof of a building, she apparently jumps off. The pain is magnified when Cardinal is at the scene shortly after the body is discovered and cradles her dead form in his arms.
For reasons he cannot explain, he questions the ruling of suicide, even though a suicide note written in her handwriting is found on the roof. Placed on grieving leave, he pursues the matter and begins to find some inconsistent features of the case. Trying desperately to maintain his professional detachment, he calls in several favors as he finds some clues but no clear direction.
Lise DeLome is a female officer who is placed in charge of a child pornography investigation. Photos of a man sexually molesting a young girl have surfaced on the Internet and there is reason to believe that they originated in her jurisdiction. She manages to identify the marina where some of the photos were taken and when Cardinal returns to duty, he is also assigned to the case.
In Cardinal's investigation, he discovers a plague of suicides, all of which were patients of Dr. Bell. However, since Bell treats some of the most serious cases of depression, while it is a red flag, it is one that can be explained. The simultaneous investigations proceed, leading to a convergent conclusion that is suspected early, but not confirmed until late.
This book is truly a page-turner that had me riveted. It was only a few hours before my first class of the semester was to start and rather than preparing for class I was absorbing the last few pages of this story.

Having recently read all of Giles Blunt's previous books featuring Cardinal and Delorme, I devoured this one in a single day. It's his best yet, with less of the overt evil and grisly detail of some of the earlier books, but even more of the superb character study and psychological insight. The evil in this book is subtler, and it's completely believable.

Simply put, Blunt is a terrific writer. His prose is crisp and unfussy, yet still evocative and moving. He knows his setting thoroughly and recreates it so effectively that even if you've never been to his small Ontario city, you feel that you know it well too. His characters are vividly drawn and very real; I find myself thinking about Cardinal and Delorme after I've finished of the books, which is as much as you can ask from any writer.

I'm convinced (as someone previously pointed out) we were not reading the same book. Granted, I have not read the author's previous books so maybe those books are better (or more interesting) than BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS. The current novel plods along at a glacial pace and I kept reading with the hope that it might get better. It didn't. A few things: If you read procedurals or mysteries, you'll figure out that the perpetrator is revealed very early in the novel. Second, the plotting is atrocious in telling the two ongoing crimes - it's all fairly obvious and by the book so there really were no surprises. Lastly, the writing is a bit stilted. No matter how miserable Cardinal (the detective) was over the death of his wife, I never felt his pain or loss. I was just bored with the main story and the secondary crime. I didn't care enough to read it with any enthusiasm. Page-turner? Hardly. I am a little surprised, however, that this novel won some type of mystery award. There are much better books out there.

...but it's not two of the books, it's half of each book.

I've read the 4 books in this series over the past month and they all have the same problem in my opinion. The chapters which involve the cops Cardinal and Delorme are terrific, but the books contain many chapters which instead follow the criminals involved and I found them uniformly dull and unbelievable. I plodded through them just wanting them to be over.

I wish I could give the series a higher rating because I love the northern setting and the exploration of mental illness in a relationship. I was sorry to read the event of the first chapter of this one despite the lack of surprise due to the foreshadowing of another relationship throughout the series. I was also sorry to see Cardinal's past criminal act swept under the rug as the series progressed. If another book appears in the series I'll read it, but I wish the author would change his formula and keep his main characters involved throughout the book.

Don't often read mysterys set in Canada and written by a Canadian. Blunt has created a special place with his Algonquin Bay CID unit. Great read, easy to digest and remember the story line. The characters are fleshed out. I recommend his entire series.

John Cardinal and his wife Catherine live on a quiet street in Algonquin Bay, an idyllic, lakeshore community in Northern Ontario (and a stand-in for the author's real-life hometown of North Bay, Ontario). Cardinal is a detective with the Algonquin Bay police department. Catherine is a photographer and teaches at the local community college, and she is a manic depressive. The couple's happy, nearly thirty-year marriage has been punctuated by Catherine's hospitalizations for depression, but when the story starts she has been out of the hospital for a year--taking her medicine and seeing a psychiatrist regularly. Still, it hardly comes as a shock to most of Blunt's characters when Catherine turns up dead, an apparent suicide. Cardinal himself doesn't seriously question the coroner's finding on the matter until he receives an anonymous "sympathy" card gloating over her death. Other pieces of evidence--but nothing definitive--also begin to suggest that Catherine's death was not a suicide, and Cardinal, on leave from the department, investigates the matter quietly. Friends on the force assist him on the sly, though under orders not to waste police resources on a closed case. Other cases under active investigation compel more of their attention, however, and in fact wind up being connected to Catherine's death--though not in a way that readers are likely to anticipate.

By the Time You Read This is Giles Blunt's fourth novel featuring Detective John Cardinal, though it's the first I've read in the series. 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 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.

Pausing to think about Blunt's villain after my manic rush to reach the end, I'm not sure that he's a realistic character, but I was certainly able to suspend disbelief long enough to finish the book. By the Time You Read This is a real page-turner.

Debra Hamel -- author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece (Yale University Press, 2003)

If there's any justice in the reading world, then "By the Time You Read This" will get Giles Blunt some serious notice. That's because Blunt has topped himself in his fourth mystery novel involving John Cardinal and the fictional town of Algonquin Bay, with his darkly compelling writing, excellent characters, and a brilliantly harrowing finale.

Cop John Cardinal is on a stakeout when he is called in to a suicide, a woman jumping off a building -- and it turns out to be his wife Catherine. Cardinal is devastated by her loss, but he starts to suspect that her death was not suicide when a series of cruel, taunting cards start arriving. His fellow cops (and Catherine's shrink) think he's just in denial, especially since a suicide note in Catherine's handwriting was found beside her body.

Meanwhile detective Lise Delorme is investigating a child pornography case -- a series of photos of a man and a little girl -- and little details reveal that they were taken in Algonquin Bay. Meanwhile, Cardinal continues to find discrepancies in the supposed suicide, and as the clues slowly come together, he finds himself face to face with a killer who uses the most horrific weapon imaginable against his victims...

"By the Time You Read This" is one of those rare books that successfully straddles the line between psychological horror and crime mysteries. Blunt does have a little awkwardness -- the beginning is strainedly poetic, and the end could have used a couple more chapters to wrap everything up -- but the bulk of the book is pure gold.

Basically, Blunt is perfectly suited to mystery writing. His writing casts a dark, noirish light on everything, where everyone is untrustworthy and all sorts of nasty secrets simmer just under the surface. And he gives a gritty feeling to many of the scenes of copwork, but still manages to keep a tasteful, quiet approach to things like child pornography.

His writing excellence shines in scenes like a young man's suicide, or Cardinal picking up the body of his wife. And the mystery itself uncoils gradually through the plot, dropping little hints along the way. The hints build up and up and up, until it becomes crystal clear who the killer is, and the way in which he's (almost) untraceably killing his victims. It's a brilliant idea.

John Cardinal gets the rough treatment this time around, developing some obsessions and trying to deal with grief -- all the stages, from denial to painful acceptance. Delorme has a lot of the copwork in this book, and she's a solid character who really works at finding the little girl in the pictures.

"By the Time You Read This" is a brilliant mystery, with only a bit of awkwardness at the beginning and end, but with a unique murderer and a twisty storyline. Definitely a great read.