John Cardinal Series Analysis

The John Cardinal series are a series of novels by Canadian screenwriter and novelist Giles Blunt. The first novel of the John Cardinal series was Forty Words for Sorrow that was first published in 2005. However while the series is one of the most popular of his works, Blunt debuted his writing career with a psychological thriller titled Cold Eye. Blunt grew up in North Bay which forms the basis for the Algonquin Bay the setting for his John Cardinal novels. The novels retain the major physical features of the town including the lakes that town straddles and the street layouts. Over the years his novels have won several prestigious awards such as the Arthur Ellis Award by the Crime Writers of Canada for The Delicate Storm, and the Silver Dagger

Blunt writes eloquently about police procedures in tracking down criminals, processing intelligence and solving crime. He draws excellent characters from the primary characters right to the tertiary and secondary characters to make for very real and relatable characters. The author does not turn the lead character or their supporting cast into a cardboard figure as he fleshes him out in the very first novel of the series and shows him developing over the course of the series. For instance he draws attention to the protagonist’s humanity when he shows concern for a girl who goes missing and is believed dead. He also makes Algonquin Bay a character in itself as the plot-lines for the most part rely on the town to move the story forward. What makes the novels so great is the skillful meshing of different plot lines to make for an intriguing whole. John Cardinal teams up with Lise Delorme to solve crime outside of the rules, regulation and bureaucracies of the police force. While Cardinal is an effective detective, he faces his own demons from years back. He had once ripped of a criminal boss when he was an investigator in Toronto. While he did it to take his daughter to a great university, he always feels that karma is coming back to haunt him by striking his wife with bipolar disorder.

John Cardinal and his partner Lisa Delorme have discovered something gruesome in the desert beyond the city. It seems that a cold blooded killer had been using an out of the way cabin as his dumping ground. But things get thick when the detectives find another body shrouded in ice and stark naked. Investigations reveal that one of the dead is carrying an American passport necessitating the Mounties to be informed of the situation. But the Canadian Secret Service response raises more questions than it answers. Could they be dealing with something sinister or a possible terrorist link? Northern Ontario is in the midst of one of the bitterest winters amid a storm of the century that gives the woods a lethal and glittering beauty. But John has no choice but to track down and apprehend or stop a vicious