By the Time You Read This: Summary and book reviews of By the Time You Read This by Giles Blunt, plus links to an excerpt from By the Time You Read This and a biography of Giles Blunt.
By the Time You Read This A Novel
by Giles Blunt
Hardcover: Feb 2007,
352 pages.
Paperback: Jul 2008,
352 pages.
Autumn has arrived in Algonquin Bay, and with it an unusual spate of suicides. The most shocking victim yet is Detective John Cardinal’s wife, who has finally succumbed to her battle with manic depression. As Cardinal takes time to grieve, his partner, Lise Delorme, handles an unsavory assignment: a young girl appears in a series of unspeakable photos being traded online, and background elements indicate she lives in Algonquin Bay. Delorme is desperate to find the girl before she suffers more abuse.
When Cardinal receives a string of hateful anonymous notes about his wife’s death, he begins to suspect homicide. His colleagues believe he is too distraught to think clearly, and he’s forced to investigate alone. In doing so, he comes up against a brand of killer neither he—nor the reader—has ever seen before.
In his most masterful and thrilling novel yet, Giles Blunt confirms his reputation as a rising international star in crime fiction, and positions Detective John Cardinal among the finest characters in the genre.
With its themes of mental illness, physical abuse and dealing with loss By The Time You Read This could be a deeply depressing story, but in fact it's an absolutely riveting character-driven mystery, a thinking-person's novel that tackles big issues sensitively, while reaching the pulse-pounding heights of the best thrillers. If you have yet to discover Giles Blunt, start now! (Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
Entertainment Weekly - Daniel Fierman
The resulting novel resembles a photocopy of a photocopy of the elegant, spare work of Northern European crime specialists like Henning Menkell — readable stuff that lingers poorly in the mind. C+
The Globe & Mail
In By the Time You Read This, Blunt, who has received Canadian and International awards for this series, once again proves he can set the scene better than almost anyone else in the crime genre, putting the reader right into Algonquin Bay with all its autumnal glory, its painful lives and sordid little secrets. . . . Blunt, unlike some series authors, never writes the same book twice.
The Telegraph - Susanna Yager
By identifying the perpetrator early on Blunt has turned a conventional whodunit into a fascinating psychological duel between the detective and the murderer.
Publishers Weekly
Sharp dialogue, complex characters and a satisfying conclusion.
Booklist
Starred Review. Suspense and a relentless sense of doom pervade this latest offering from Blunt....here even the most minor characters are rendered in vivid detail.
Kirkus
He makes a story drenched in sadness almost unbearably exciting. The result is the most beautifully written, deeply felt page-turner of the year.
The Toronto Star
Giles Blunt's fourth and most affecting crime novel .... makes for great sleuthing. It also makes for heart-breaking stuff, the kind of thing that forces the reader to turn away from the page and give the horror a rest.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Pedantic Englishman Where was your editor? An otherwise above average crime novel spoiled for this reader by one glaring error. At one point the English psychiatrist's English wife suggests they retire back to England. She has her eye on a small cottage just outside Nottingham a short... Read More
Giles Blunt was born in 1952 in
Windsor, Ontario, and grew up in
North Bay, Ontario. He describes
his parents as being "so English
that the space on their
passports for citizenship could
only be filled in" British
Beyond Belief". He spent most of
his education at a Catholic
boys' school called Scollard
Hall, moving to a "regular
school", Algonquin Composite,
for his last two years.
His career started with poetry
which was published in various
publications including Grain
and Poetry Canada. Then
he fell in love with movies and
decided to write screenplays
and, in 1980, moved to New York,
where he lived for the next 22
years. He says, "living in New
York gave me enough distance
from northern...
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(1006 words).
Entertainment Weekly - Daniel Fierman
of 5
by Pedantic Englishman
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