Blackfly Season (The John Cardinal Crime Series) - Softcover
Red Bear stood close to the fire and stretched toward the sky, every muscle in his body straining. The veins in his neck stood out like electrical cords. His voice had gone thin and raspy and the words came streaming out of him with a terrible urgency. The words– if in fact they were words – collided with one another. [Blackfly Season, page 94]
According to Detective John Cardinal, the truly diabolical thing about blackflies is their stealthy silence; there is no warning and no chance of a pre-emptive strike. Every year at the beginning of May, the blackflies take over Algonquin Bay, swarming in clouds out of their winter wombs in the standing water of lakes, creeks and swamps.
But this year, the blackflies aren’t the only ones to make their way into town. A self-proclaimed shaman and card-carrying member of the Chippewa First Nations has also arrived. Known only as Red Bear, the mysterious figure has recruited three young men from town who share a history of drug use and living on the fringe.
And Red Bear isn’t the only mysterious visitor. At the World Tavern, the oldest but perhaps least reputable bar in the city of Algonquin Bay, OPP officer Jerry Commanda is enjoying his regular Friday night Diet Coke with a squeeze of lemon. He meets a young red-haired woman who is unable to tell him her name, where she lives, or how she came to be at the World Tavern. It’s not until a hospital X-ray reveals a bullet lodged in her brain that the reason for her amnesia becomes clear.
When John Cardinal and Lise Delorme are called in to take over the case from Commanda, they don’t have a lot of leads on who this mysterious redhead is, let alone why someone would want her dead. And when the mutilated body of a member of the local biker gang the Viking Riders is discovered near long columns of bizarre hieroglyphics, Cardinal and Delorme begin to suspect that it is isn’t just Viking Rider justice.
Despite the climbing body count, Cardinal is distracted. His wife, Catherine, has left to go to Toronto with a group of her photography students and Cardinal is convinced that the stress and excitement of the trip will push her to the breaking point. His worst fears are confirmed when a call reaches him from a student concerned by Catherine’s erratic behaviour. Cardinal speeds to Toronto to reach his wife before she unravels.
When Cardinal returns, a third body turns up with a bullet from the same gun that shot the redhead. Linking the three murders and finding out who’s responsible becomes an intricate game of unravelling the secrets of families and decoding the mysteries of an ancient form of African voodoo.
From the Hardcover edition.
According to Detective John Cardinal, the truly diabolical thing about blackflies is their stealthy silence; there is no warning and no chance of a pre-emptive strike. Every year at the beginning of May, the blackflies take over Algonquin Bay, swarming in clouds out of their winter wombs in the standing water of lakes, creeks and swamps.
But this year, the blackflies aren’t the only ones to make their way into town. A self-proclaimed shaman and card-carrying member of the Chippewa First Nations has also arrived. Known only as Red Bear, the mysterious figure has recruited three young men from town who share a history of drug use and living on the fringe.
And Red Bear isn’t the only mysterious visitor. At the World Tavern, the oldest but perhaps least reputable bar in the city of Algonquin Bay, OPP officer Jerry Commanda is enjoying his regular Friday night Diet Coke with a squeeze of lemon. He meets a young red-haired woman who is unable to tell him her name, where she lives, or how she came to be at the World Tavern. It’s not until a hospital X-ray reveals a bullet lodged in her brain that the reason for her amnesia becomes clear.
When John Cardinal and Lise Delorme are called in to take over the case from Commanda, they don’t have a lot of leads on who this mysterious redhead is, let alone why someone would want her dead. And when the mutilated body of a member of the local biker gang the Viking Riders is discovered near long columns of bizarre hieroglyphics, Cardinal and Delorme begin to suspect that it is isn’t just Viking Rider justice.
Despite the climbing body count, Cardinal is distracted. His wife, Catherine, has left to go to Toronto with a group of her photography students and Cardinal is convinced that the stress and excitement of the trip will push her to the breaking point. His worst fears are confirmed when a call reaches him from a student concerned by Catherine’s erratic behaviour. Cardinal speeds to Toronto to reach his wife before she unravels.
When Cardinal returns, a third body turns up with a bullet from the same gun that shot the redhead. Linking the three murders and finding out who’s responsible becomes an intricate game of unravelling the secrets of families and decoding the mysteries of an ancient form of African voodoo.
From the Hardcover edition.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
From the Inside Flap:
The highly anticipated new novel in the bestselling John Cardinal series from Giles Blunt, winner of the Arthur Ellis Award and the British Crime Writers' Macallan Silver Dagger Award.
It's summer in Algonquin Bay, and the blackflies are driving people a little mad. John Cardinal and Lise Delorme have a different sort of mystery on their hands: a young woman has wandered bug-bitten out of the bush and can't remember her name or where she comes from. The reason? She has been shot in the head with a small-calibre weapon and the bullet is lodged in her brain.
Then a body turns up in a cave in the woods, the corpse of one Wombat Guthrie, a biker/drug dealer whose head, hands and feet have been removed but whose tattoos are unmistakable. At first the two cases could not seem further apart. But subsequent clues, and another brutal murder, seem to connect both of them to the fortunes of a small, even amateurish, drug gang that has recently hit the big time under the leadership of an Ojibwa shaman named Red Bear.
With the help of a neuropsychologist, the mysterious young woman regains some of her memory. But try as he might, Cardinal just can't tie all these threads together. He begins to suspect that the innocent young woman may not be so innocent after all, and that her recently returned "memories" may not be the whole truth. And Red Bear may not be what he seems, either. Is he really a native shaman or is he just another drug dealer with an appetite for savage murder?
About the Author:
It's summer in Algonquin Bay, and the blackflies are driving people a little mad. John Cardinal and Lise Delorme have a different sort of mystery on their hands: a young woman has wandered bug-bitten out of the bush and can't remember her name or where she comes from. The reason? She has been shot in the head with a small-calibre weapon and the bullet is lodged in her brain.
Then a body turns up in a cave in the woods, the corpse of one Wombat Guthrie, a biker/drug dealer whose head, hands and feet have been removed but whose tattoos are unmistakable. At first the two cases could not seem further apart. But subsequent clues, and another brutal murder, seem to connect both of them to the fortunes of a small, even amateurish, drug gang that has recently hit the big time under the leadership of an Ojibwa shaman named Red Bear.
With the help of a neuropsychologist, the mysterious young woman regains some of her memory. But try as he might, Cardinal just can't tie all these threads together. He begins to suspect that the innocent young woman may not be so innocent after all, and that her recently returned "memories" may not be the whole truth. And Red Bear may not be what he seems, either. Is he really a native shaman or is he just another drug dealer with an appetite for savage murder?
"Cardinal was thinking about the young woman with no memory. Those green eyes looked so innocent, her whole manner was so benign -- it was hard to imagine anyone wanting to kill her. Then again, with a headinjury like that, who knew what her previous personality may have been? For all Cardinal knew, she could be Bitch Incarnate. The only thing he was sure of: with no home and no memory, she must be the loneliest woman on Earth, and he wanted to find the person who had done that to her.
--excerpt from Blackfly Season
"From the Hardcover edition.
Giles Blunt grew up in North Bay, Ontario. After spending over twenty years in New York City, he has recently moved back to Toronto. He has written scripts for Law & Order, Street Legal and Night Heat. He is the author of Forty Words for Sorrow, for which he won the British Crime Writers’ Macallan Silver Dagger, and The Delicate Storm, winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel.
From the Hardcover edition.
From the Hardcover edition.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherVintage Canada
- Publication date2005
- ISBN 10 0679314423
- ISBN 13 9780679314424
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages336
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Blackfly Season (The John Cardinal Crime Series)
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ISBN 13: 9780679314424
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