The Delicate Storm

Winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime NovelFinalist for the Dublin IMPAC Literary Award"It’s almost a crime how beautiful Blunt’s prose is. . . . The new novel tests positive on Blunt’s descriptive skills, which are undiminished. You are preternaturally there with these characters, crunching across frozen parking lots, shivering at stakeouts in the woods—ordinary cop scenes that in the hands of a stylist like Blunt become means of ratcheting up suspense. The success of The Delicate Storm’s plot, however, is open to interpretation." —Quill & Quire “The prose bristles with tension and Blunt presents a conspiracy starring all the right acronyms—CSIS, the RCMP, the CIA and the FLQ. The Delicate Storm is the second novel featuring Det. John Cardinal and I hope it won’t be the last.” —Chatelaine "An absorbing, perfect-for-the-summer kind of read.” —En Route “[Blunt] has an excellent grasp of the issues and history and does a great job of working them into the plot, and he never lets go of the characters, which is where he really shines.” — Margaret Cannon, The Globe and Mail “Giles Blunt dazzled us mystery lovers with Forty Words for Sorrow. Now he has done it again with The Delicate Storm. Don't miss it.” —Tony Hillerman “In a genre where writers often compete to create vile, loathsome villains perpetrating outrageous crimes, Blunt stands as a master craftsman who shows us not only darkness, but also decency.” —Publishers Weekly “This book is a diamond—a glittering novel with sharp, hard edges and depth. . . . [Blunt] has imagined many of the leading characters with insight and clarity.” —Hamilton Spectator “It’s a kind of mystery that’s literate, smart and subtly political. It also has an unerring sense of time and place.” —Edmonton Journal “Giles Blunt combines a massive ice storm, the conservative Ontario political scene and the FLQ crisis of 1970 into a crackerjack of a mystery novel. . . . This book is a compulsive and intelligent page-turner.” —The Chronicle-Herald (Halifax) “Blunt has woven together fictional characters with recent history to create a narrative both instructive and compelling.” —The National Post"Intriguing, well-considered and original.” —The Vancouver Sun "[Blunt] has devised another fascinating case for his affable protagonist. . . . Blunt gradually unfolds the engaging plot, dropping clues as well as several red herrings and twists that will keep readers turning the pages. . . . His dialogue is credible and his prose moves the book along to its gripping conclusion.” —The Winnipeg Free Press “Wry humour, understated storytelling, and a sensitive understanding of how lives can be shattered by a single mistake. . . . It is a multi-layered, elegantly written story that manages to transform ancient politics into unput-downable reading.” —The Calgary Herald “Blunt weaves an interesting and easily read tale while laying out his mystery. . . . [His] writing is smooth and compact and carries you along with the right amount of detail mixed with the right amount of action.” —FFWD Magazine “This is good. The plot drives fast and well and the people speak like human beings. But it’s Blunt’s sense of place that is unique; that assures us he can join the select group of writers—such as Ian Rankin and Tony Hillerman—who can locate their readers in a fictional universe as physically real as the chair they inhabit.” —The Observer"Riveting. . . . The book has the urgency of a TV crime drama. . . .The plot is vast but plausible. . . . The prose bristles with tension.” —Chatelaine “Offers lashings of suspense, excellent characters and prose and a well-told credible story worth the time spent reading it.” —Victoria Times Colonist