I would give Giles Blunt's
Forty Words for Sorrow, published in 2000, a resounding five stars, if by the highest rating I also meant, most satisfied. It is a brilliant book: the tale drags the reader along, mercilessly, into the warm hearts of the flawed good guys, the chilling heartlessness of the efficient bad guys, their brutality lashing out, page after page. A brilliant book? A deeply disturbing book ... I need a cleanser after this.
Giles Blunt's hero is Detective Inspector John Cardinal, 10 years already on the Algonquin Bay police force somewhere near Huntsville, Ontario. He's a dedicated cop, always struggling to be the best he can, weighed down by an action in his past, and by a wife whose mental illness does collateral damage on his soul, while he tries every day to be the best father to his Yale attending daughter. He's a cop with issues and he's a very, very good cop.
Stir into this mix: Toronto drug mafia infesting his home town of Algonquin Bay; a serial killer on the loose who targets teenagers; a frozen body found in a mine-shaft, a 13 year old whose case Cardinal worked on; and a new female partner who has one foot in Special Investigations and the target is John Cardinal ... the inside snitch who is feeding the local mafia guy "helpful" information for a fee. It's a police procedural with forensics and lead tracking; and a thriller, with a relentlessly suspenseful playing out as another teenage victim runs out of time and Cardinal and his team inch closer ... and closer.
Recommended with the caveat: it's a hard tale to put aside; it's a hard tale not to. And another half dozen books beckon when you're done.
It's on
Kindle and
Kobo, for under $9.