Bästa boken i serien då handlingen verkligen ligger nära huvudkaraktären. Bra driv och storyn känns trovärdig. ( )

John Cardinal solves his wife's apparent suicide (which was not). Delorme investigates cold case paediophile case. Not my favorite book by Blunt, although other reviewers think it is. ( )

I think this is the best John Cardinal book so far. And that’s saying quite a bit because Giles Blunt’s previous three books in this series have won awards and commendations. CTV has made two of the books into TV shows and I think this book has been given the same treatment and will be shown in the fall of 2018. But for me this one shows John Cardinal at his lowest ebb and he still retains his investigative acumen and his humanity.
Readers of this series know that John Cardinal is a police detective living in Algonquin Bay with his wife Catherine. Catherine is a gifted photographer but she struggles with manic depression which results in regular hospitalizations. At the beginning of this book Catherine’s body is found at the base of a newly constructed high rise by a patrolman. The patrolman can find no identification so it is not his fault that Cardinal is the detective first called to the scene. A suicide note is found on the roof and the death is ruled a suicide. Cardinal has a hard time accepting this finding because Catherine seemed to be stable when the two of them had supper together just a few hours before. He talks to everyone else who had dealings with Catherine shortly before her death. No one saw anything concerning; even her psychiatrist says “Here I am, someone with whom Catherine has been discussing her emotional life in detail for nearly a year and I didn’t see it coming.” The psychiatrist, Dr. Bell, is something of a specialist in depression so this should make Cardinal feel less guilty but something still doesn’t seem right to him. Meanwhile his sometime partner, Lise Delorme, is trying to track down a young girl whose image is on the internet being sexually abused. The background in one of the pictures shows the marina in Algonquin Bay so the OPP have asked Lise to investigate. Since Cardinal is not taking advantage of his bereavement leave he agrees to help Lise while also carrying on his own investigation into Catherine’s death.
Both these cases involve people in a position of trust victimizing vulnerable people. I can’t think of a more disturbing circumstance for commission of a crime. And yet it is all too common. ( )

I enjoy this series, and I thought Blunt's description of grief was vivid, but the mystery was forced and less then satisfying. ( )

Published in the UK under the title Fields of Grief

John Cardinal, a small-town policeman, seems pretty run-of-the mill, like his community. Algonquin Bay sits on a lake, surrounded by Northern Ontario rocky forests. There are the usual little crimes and petty injustices to deal with. One night, however, while on the discomforting task of exposing an adultery situation, John is called to an accident scene. A woman has fallen from a new high rise. Or was she pushed? Or did she jump? This is of particular importance to John, because it turns out the woman is his wife, Catherine.

The book reads like a standalone novel, which I mean as a compliment: I never felt like I was entering Cardinal's life mid-story; there were no awkward references to past cases thrown in to connect this installment up with previous books. The mystery of Catherine's death is not easily unraveled: the evidence Cardinal uncovers leads him to erroneous conclusions, and the reader is likely to be misled as well. Blunt's principal bad guy is an unusual character, with unusual motivations. His identity is revealed to us not quite halfway into the book, and when it comes the subtle revelation is downright chilling. ( )