Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Readalikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Jun 2001, 384 pages
Paperback:
Mar 2002, 368 pages
Superbly paced, with fully fleshed characters and utterly convincing police detail. "Blunt has done for Canada's north what James Lee Burke did for Cajun Louisiana."
When the badly decomposed body of thirteen-year-old Katie Pine is found in an abandoned mine shaft, John Cardinal is vindicated. It was Cardinal who'd kept the Pine case open--insisting she was no mere runaway--and Cardinal who'd been demoted to the burglary squad for his excessive zeal. But Katie Pine isn't the only youngster to have gone missing in the rural town of Algonquin Bay, and Cardinal is now given the go-ahead to reopen the files on three other lost kids. When another youth is reported missing, he begins to see a pattern that screams "serial killer."
Meanwhile, the brass have partnered him with Lisa Delorme, newly shifted to homicide from the Office of Special Investigations, and Cardinal can't help but wonder if she's been sent to keep tabs on him. A guilty conscience makes him think so.
Superbly paced, with fully fleshed characters and utterly convincing police detail, Forty Words for Sorrow is also a novel of place that transcends genre. Blunt puts us in a small Canadian town in the dead of winter and makes us feel the cold, then turns the cold into a metaphor for the destruction of young lives.
Chapter 1
It gets dark early in Algonquin Bay. Take a drive up Airport Hill at four o'clock on a February afternoon, and when you come back half an hour later the streets of the city will glitter below you in the dark like so many runways. The forty-sixth parallel may not be all that far north; you can be much farther north and still be in the United States, and even London, England, is a few degrees closer to the North Pole. But this is Ontario, Canada, we're talking about, and Algonquin Bay in February is the very definition of winter: Algonquin Bay is snowbound, Algonquin Bay is quiet, Algonquin Bay is very, very cold.
John Cardinal was driving home from the airport where he had just watched his daughter, Kelly, board a plane bound for the United States by way of Toronto. The car still smelled of her--or at least of the scent that had lately become her trademark: Rhapsody or Ecstasy or some such. To Cardinal, wife gone and now daughter gone, it smelled of loneliness. ...
Tony Hillerman
Lee Child
If you liked Forty Words For Sorrow, try these:
by Louise Penny
Published 2014
Read ReviewsChief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec digs beneath the idyllic surface of village life in Three Pines, finding long buried secrets--and facing a few of his own ghosts.
by Karin Fossum
Published 2006
Read ReviewsIn spare, incisive prose Fossum turns a conventional police procedural into a sensitive examination of troubled minds and a disturbing look at the way society views them.
Become a Member and discover books that entertain, engage & enlighten!
News of the World
A brilliant work of historical fiction that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.
The Weight of Ink
by Rachel Kadish
An intellectual, suspenseful, and entertaining page-turner.
Reader Reviews
A richly layered novel of hearts broken seemingly beyond repair and then bound by a stunning act of human devotion.
About the bookVisitors can view some of BookBrowse for free. Full access is for members only.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends books that we believe to be best in class. Books that will whisk you to faraway places and times, that will expand your mind and challenge you -- the kinds of books you just can't wait to tell your friends about.
Subscribe to receive some of our best reviews, "beyond the book" articles, book club info & giveaways by email.
