Giles Blunt is the internationally acclaimed and bestselling author of the John Cardinal crime series. Prior to his success as novelist, he was a successful TV screenwriter whose credits include Law and Order, Night Heat, and Street Legal. He lives in Toronto, Ontario, with his wife.

No Such Creature (2008)
Tooling across the American southwest in their giant Winnebago, Max and his nephew, Owen, seem harmless enough, the actorly old fellow spouting Shakespeare like a faucet while his young charge trots him through select tourist destinations along the road. But appearances, as you might imagine, can be deceiving.

Old Max is actually a master thief, and young Owen's summer vacation is his careful apprenticeship in a life of crime. Pulling heists is scary enough, but ominous signs point to the alarming fact that The Subtractors are on their tail, criminal bogeymen who stop at nothing to steal from other thieves. The road trip soon turns into a chase, by turns comic and horrifying. The most disturbing twist: Owen's slow realization that the person he loves most in the world is the one who can do him the most harm.

Rights Sold
Swedish - Albert Bonniers Forlag AB

By The Time You Read This (2006)
Detective John Cardinal is on the hunt for an ingenious killer even as he mourns his own wife's tragic death in this thriller of heart-stopping suspense

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.

Rights Sold
United Kingdom & Commonwealth - HarperCollins Publishers Ltd; German -Verlagsgruppe Droemer Knaur; French World - Editions du Masque; Polish - Wydawnictwo Amber Sp. z o.o.; Swedish - Albert Bonniers Forlag AB; Russian - Inostranka Publishers
 

Black Fly Season (2005)
Winner of Britain's Silver Dagger and Canada's Arthur Ellis awards, shortlisted for Bouchercon's Hammett, Anthony, and Macavity prizes, Giles Blunt returns with this third intensely disturbing crime novel.

When a beautiful young woman stumbles into a rough Algonquin Bay tavern covered in black fly bites, bits of leaves stuck in her curly red hair, the bartender knows she is either dumb or high. No one in Algonquin Bay goes out unprotected in black fly season.

"Red," as the local cops come to call her, is neither, but it takes a full examination to discover that her woozy behavior isn't due to drugs or diminished mental capacity. Red has a bullet in her brain. And no memory of how it got there or who she is.

If homicide detectives John Cardinal and Lisa Delorme haven't a clue to her identity, they do know she is in mortal danger. Someone tried to kill her. Someone thought she was dead. Someone will try again if word leaks out she is not.

Rights Sold
German - Verlagsgruppe Droemer Knaur; Dutch - De Boekerij BV; Italian - Marco Tropea Editore Srl; French World - Editions du Masque; Swedish - Albert Bonniers Forlag AB; United Kingdom & Commonwealth - HarperCollins Publishers Ltd; Polish - Wydawnictwo Amber Sp. z o.o.; Russian - Inostranka Publishers
 

 
The Delicate Storm (2003)
Blunt's standout sequel. Det. John Cardinal of the Algonquin Bay, Ontario police force is called in to investigate the severed arm of a white male that has been dragged out of the woods by a neighborhood dog. After the remaining pieces of the body turn up and the man is identified as an American citizen, John and his French-Canadian partner, Lise Delorme, are immersed in a case that involves more bodies, a 30-year-old unsolved murder with ties to the violently separatist Quebec Liberation Front, and clashes among various law enforcement agencies, including the Mounties, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the local police. 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.

Rights Sold
HarperCollins UK; Random House Canada; Marian Wood Books at Putnam US; Droemer, Germany; RBA Libros, Spain; Albert Bonniers Forlag, Sweden; Editions Jean Claude Lattes, France; Marco Tropea Editore, Italy

" [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".”
- 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

"[The Delicate Storm] tests positive on Blunt's desriptive 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".”
- Quill & Quire

Forty Words For Sorrow (2001)
His much acclaimed thriller, Forty Words for Sorrow won the British Crime Writers' Macallan Silver Dagger.

John Cardinal was taken off homicide investigation after a fruitless and expensive quest for 13-year-old Katie Pine, a Chippewa girl who disappeared from the nearby reservation. After months of insisting that Katie was no runaway, Cardinal receives the cold comfort of vindication in the form of Katie's corpse, discovered in an abandoned mine shaft. But the case, when reopened, becomes a Pandora's box of horror. Katie's body is only the first to be found, as Cardinal uncovers a pattern that links her death to those of two other children. When another boy is reported missing, Cardinal knows he is in a race against time to find the killer.

Tony Hillerman said Forty Words for Sorrow is the novel he wished he'd written. With devastating precision, Blunt effortlessly weaves together strands of lives both led and taken in this tiny Canadian town, limning a hauntingly paradoxical picture of isolation and community, two sides of a fragile bulwark against violence.

Rights Sold
HarperCollins UK; Random House Canada; Marian Wood Books at Putnam US; Droemer, Germany; RBA Libros, Spain; Albert Bonniers Forlag, Sweden; Editions Jean Claude Lattes, France; Marco Tropea Editore, Italy Random House of Canada; Marion Wood Books at Putnam US; HarperCollins UK;De Boekerij, Holland; Albert Bonniers Forlag, Sweden; Droemer, Germany; Editions Jean-Claude Lattes, France; Hayakawa, Japan; RBA Libros, Spain; Marco Tropea Editore, Italy; Winner, Silver Dagger of the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain.

"Polished, at times poetic....Former TV writer Blunt...is a helluva storyteller.."
- Kirkus Reviews

"Blunt's handling of procedure...is masterful....A completely absorbing series debut..."
- Booklist

“"This highly readable combination of mystery and suspense (with a sequel already in the works) raises the bar of Canadian crime writing and is a dead certain nomination for multiple writing awards".”
- The National Post

"Brilliant -- one of the finest crime novels I've ever read."
- Jonathan Kellerman