From the Publisher

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 thismysterious 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.

The New York Times - Marilyn Stasio

For all the gruesome violence he depicts in this story about a drug merchant who disposes of the competition in occult rituals, Blunt extends extraordinary sympathy to the small-time dealers and junkies caught up in an environmental plague more devastating than any devised by nature.

Publishers Weekly

Silver Dagger-winner Blunt spins a highly disturbing but truly memorable tale about a Canadian cult's murder spree. After homicide detective John Cardinal is called in to talk to a young woman who wandered into an Algonquin Bay bar sans ID, keys or memory, doctors examining her find a bullet in her brain. Figuring whoever tried to kill her may want to finish the job, Cardinal puts the woman, dubbed "Red" for her coppery hair, into seclusion. Backed by partner Lise Delorme, Cardinal begins assembling what pieces of information he's been able to gather, and the investigation quickly takes the team from the mundane (drugs, bikers) to the grisly (a string of dismemberment killings apparently committed by a Cuban cult known as Palo Mayombe). The action will glue readers to the page, but the plot is equally moving in its quieter, more poignant moments when Cardinal, whose wife suffers from bouts of severe depression, must take time to handle family matters. Based on a true crime, the pulsing, tightly plotted narrative again shows why Blunt (Forty Words for Sorrow) should be considered among the new practitioners of crime drama's elite. Agent, Helen Heller. (June) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

An amnesiac with a bullet in her brain is the only key to a Cuban cult for homicide detectives John Cardinal and Lisa Delorme. Award-winning Blunt (Forty Words for Sorrow) lives in Toronto. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Product Details

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Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

Anybody who has spent any length of time in Algonquin Bay will tell you there are plenty of good reasons to live somewhere else. There is the distance from civilization, by which Canadians mean Toronto, 250 miles south. There is the gradual decay of the once-charming downtown, victim to the twin scourges of suburban malls and an unlucky series of fires. And, of course, there are the winters, which are ferocious, snowy and long. It’s not unusual for winter to extend its bone-numbing grip into April, and the last snowfall often occurs in May.

Then there are the blackflies. Every year, following an all-too-brief patch of spring weather, blackflies burst from the beds of northern Ontario’s numberless rivers and streams to feast on the blood of birds, livestock and the citizens of Algonquin Bay. They’re well equipped for it, too. The blackfly may be less than a quarter-inch long, but up close it resembles an attack helicopter, fitted with a sucker at one end and a nasty hook at the other. Even one of these creatures can be a misery. Caught in a swarm, a person can very rapidly go mad.

The World Tavern may not have looked too crazy on this particular Friday, but Blaine Styles, the bartender, knew there would be problems. Blackfly season just doesn’t bring out the best in people — those that drink, anyway. Blaine wasn’t a hundred percent sure which quarter the trouble would come from, but he had his candidates.

For one, there was the trio of dorks at the bar — a guy named Regis and his two friends in baseball caps, Bob and Tony. They were drinking quietly, but they had flirted a little too long withDarla, the waitress, and there was a restlessness about them that didn’t bode well for later. For another, there was the table at the back by the map of Africa. They’d been drinking Molson pretty steadily for a couple of hours now. Quiet, but steady. And then there was the girl, a redhead Blaine had never seen before who kept moving from table to table in a way that he found — professionally speaking — disturbing.

A Labatt Blue bottle flew across the room and hit the map of Canada just above Newfoundland. Blaine shot from behind the bar and waltzed the drunk who’d thrown it out the door before he could even protest. It bothered Blaine that he hadn’t even seen this one coming. The jerk had been sitting with a couple of guys in leather jackets under France, and hadn’t raised even a blip on the bartender’s radar. The World Tavern, oldest and least respectable gin joint in Algonquin Bay, could get pretty hairy on a Friday night, especially in blackfly season, and Blaine preferred to set the limits early.

He went back behind the bar and poured a couple of pitchers for the table over by the map of Africa — getting a little louder, he noticed. Then there was an order for six continentals and a couple of frozen margaritas that kept him hopping. After that there was a slack period, and he rested his foot on a beer case, easing his back while he washed a few glasses.

There weren’t too many regulars tonight; he was glad about that. Television shows would have you believe that the regulars in a bar are eccentrics with hearts of gold, but Blaine found they were mostly just hopeless dipwads with serious issues around self-esteem. The stained, shellacked maps on the walls of the World Tavern were the closest these people would ever get to leaving Algonquin Bay.

Jerry Commanda was sitting at the end of the bar nursing his usual Diet Coke with a squeeze of lemon and reading Maclean’s. A bit of a mystery, Jerry. On the whole, Blaine liked him, despite his being a regular — respected him, anyway — even if he was an awful tipper.

Jerry used to be a serious drinker — not a complete alky, but a serious drinker. This was back when he was in high school, maybe into his early twenties. But then something had sobered him up and he’d never touched alcohol again. Didn’t set foot in the World or any other bar for five, six years after that. Then, a few years ago, he’d started coming in on Friday nights, and he’d always park his skinny butt at the end of the bar. You could see everything that was going on from there.

Blaine had once asked Jerry how he’d kicked the bottle, if he’d gone the twelve-step route.

“Couldn’t stand twelve-step,” Jerry had said. “Couldn’t stand the meetings. Everyone saying they’re powerless, asking God to get them out of this pickle.” Jerry used words like that now and again, even though he was only about forty. Old-fashioned words like pickle or fellow or cantankerous. “But it turned out to be pretty easy to quit alcohol, once I figured out what I had to do was quit thinking, not drinking.”

“No one can quit thinking,” Blaine had said. “Thinking’s like breathing. Or sweating. It’s just something you do.”

Jerry then launched into some weird psychological bushwah. Said it might be true you couldn’t stop the thoughts from coming, but you could change what you did with them. The secret was being able to sidestep them. Blaine remembered the words exactly because Jerry was a four-time Ontario kick-boxing champion, and when he’d said sidestep he’d made a nifty little manoeuvre that looked kind of, well, disciplined.

So Jerry Commanda had learned to sidestep his thoughts, and the result was him parking himself at the end of the bar every Friday night for an hour or so, with his Diet Coke and his squeeze of lemon. Blaine figured it was partly to deter some of the young guys from the reserve from drinking too much. Pretty hard for them to cut loose with the reserve’s best-known cop sitting at the bar, reading a magazine and sipping his Coke. Some of them, minute they saw him, just did a 180 and walked out.

Blaine swept his wary bartender’s gaze over his domain. The Africa table was definitely getting boisterous. Boisterous was okay, but it was just one level down from obnoxious. Blaine cocked his head to one side, listening for warning notes — the gruff challenge, the outraged cry that was inevitably followed by the scraping of a chair. Except for the bottle tosser, it looked to be a peaceful night. The bottle tosser, and the girl.

Read a Sample Chapter

Blackfly Season

Random House

Chapter One

Chapter 1

Anybody who has spent any length of time in Algonquin Bay will tell you there are plenty of good reasons to live somewhere else. There is the distance from civilization, by which Canadians mean Toronto, 250 miles south. There is the gradual decay of the once-charming downtown, victim to the twin scourges of suburban malls and an unlucky series of fires. And, of course, there are the winters, which are ferocious, snowy and long. It's not unusual for winter to extend its bone-numbing grip into April, and the last snowfall often occurs in May.

Then there are the blackflies. Every year, following an all-too-brief patch of spring weather, blackflies burst from the beds of northern Ontario's numberless rivers and streams to feast on the blood of birds, livestock and the citizens of Algonquin Bay. They're well equipped for it, too. The blackfly may be less than a quarter-inch long, but up close it resembles an attack helicopter, fitted with a sucker at one end and a nasty hook at the other. Even one of these creatures can be a misery. Caught in a swarm, a person can very rapidly go mad.

The World Tavern may not have looked too crazy on this particular Friday, but Blaine Styles, the bartender, knew there would be problems. Blackfly season just doesn't bring out the best in people -- those that drink, anyway. Blaine wasn't a hundred percent sure which quarter the trouble would come from, but he had his candidates.

For one, there was the trio of dorks at the bar -- a guy named Regis and his two friends in baseball caps, Bob and Tony. They were drinking quietly, but they had flirted a little too long with Darla, the waitress, and there was a restlessness about them that didn't bode well for later. For another, there was the table at the back by the map of Africa. They'd been drinking Molson pretty steadily for a couple of hours now. Quiet, but steady. And then there was the girl, a redhead Blaine had never seen before who kept moving from table to table in a way that he found -- professionally speaking -- disturbing.

A Labatt Blue bottle flew across the room and hit the map of Canada just above Newfoundland. Blaine shot from behind the bar and waltzed the drunk who'd thrown it out the door before he could even protest. It bothered Blaine that he hadn't even seen this one coming. The jerk had been sitting with a couple of guys in leather jackets under France, and hadn't raised even a blip on the bartender's radar. The World Tavern, oldest and least respectable gin joint in Algonquin Bay, could get pretty hairy on a Friday night, especially in blackfly season, and Blaine preferred to set the limits early.

He went back behind the bar and poured a couple of pitchers for the table over by the map of Africa -- getting a little louder, he noticed. Then there was an order for six continentals and a couple of frozen margaritas that kept him hopping. After that there was a slack period, and he rested his foot on a beer case, easing his back while he washed a few glasses.

There weren't too many regulars tonight; he was glad about that. Television shows would have you believe that the regulars in a bar are eccentrics with hearts of gold, but Blaine found they were mostly just hopeless dipwads with serious issues around self-esteem. The stained, shellacked maps on the walls of the World Tavern were the closest these people would ever get to leaving Algonquin Bay.

Jerry Commanda was sitting at the end of the bar nursing his usual Diet Coke with a squeeze of lemon and reading Maclean's. A bit of a mystery, Jerry. On the whole, Blaine liked him, despite his being a regular -- respected him, anyway -- even if he was an awful tipper.

Jerry used to be a serious drinker -- not a complete alky, but a serious drinker. This was back when he was in high school, maybe into his early twenties. But then something had sobered him up and he'd never touched alcohol again. Didn't set foot in the World or any other bar for five, six years after that. Then, a few years ago, he'd started coming in on Friday nights, and he'd always park his skinny butt at the end of the bar. You could see everything that was going on from there.

Blaine had once asked Jerry how he'd kicked the bottle, if he'd gone the twelve-step route.

"Couldn't stand twelve-step," Jerry had said. "Couldn't stand the meetings. Everyone saying they're powerless, asking God to get them out of this pickle." Jerry used words like that now and again, even though he was only about forty. Old-fashioned words like pickle or fellow or cantankerous. "But it turned out to be pretty easy to quit alcohol, once I figured out what I had to do was quit thinking, not drinking."

"No one can quit thinking," Blaine had said. "Thinking's like breathing. Or sweating. It's just something you do."

Jerry then launched into some weird psychological bushwah. Said it might be true you couldn't stop the thoughts from coming, but you could change what you did with them. The secret was being able to sidestep them. Blaine remembered the words exactly because Jerry was a four-time Ontario kick-boxing champion, and when he'd said sidestep he'd made a nifty little manoeuvre that looked kind of, well, disciplined.

So Jerry Commanda had learned to sidestep his thoughts, and the result was him parking himself at the end of the bar every Friday night for an hour or so, with his Diet Coke and his squeeze of lemon. Blaine figured it was partly to deter some of the young guys from the reserve from drinking too much. Pretty hard for them to cut loose with the reserve's best-known cop sitting at the bar, reading a magazine and sipping his Coke. Some of them, minute they saw him, just did a 180 and walked out.

Blaine swept his wary bartender's gaze over his domain. The Africa table was definitely getting boisterous. Boisterous was okay, but it was just one level down from obnoxious. Blaine cocked his head to one side, listening for warning notes -- the gruff challenge, the outraged cry that was inevitably followed by the scraping of a chair. Except for the bottle tosser, it looked to be a peaceful night. The bottle tosser, and the girl.


From the Hardcover edition.

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Excerpted from Blackfly Season by Giles Blunt Excerpted by permission.
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