By this time you read this …

…you will have wasted valuable hours of your life

TANIN REFAHI

By the Time You Read This, the new mystery novel by Canadian author Giles Blunt, is far from being inspiring, interesting, or even intelligent. It’s a haphazard attempt at a novel that has, at its centre, a good idea. That’s what made it most painful for me: it had the potential to be great. Instead, I lost many valuable hours reading this book when my time could have been better spent doing nothing at all.

The first thing you need to know before you read a mystery novel is that they are generic by nature. In many you’ll find a middle-aged male detective with a younger “sidekick” who may be male or female. The main character, a middle-aged male detective, is either a “by-the-book” cop or a “throwthe- book-out-the-window” cop that means well but has his demons, the latter being my preference.

This general description is very common and By the Time You Read This does nothing to change this stereotype. Blunt gives readers nothing but simple, forgettable characters. Det. John Cardinal, our “by-the-book” protagonist, is one of the most simple characters I’ve ever encountered. A supposedly smart, though griefstricken man, Cardinal just made the book even more unbearable to read. And his little sidekick, Det. Lise Delorme, is more hollow than a bottomless pit. Well, I shouldn’t be so harsh: there was one character that was somewhat interesting, but I’ll leave that character as a little surprise for those who still insist on reading By the Time.

This lack of compelling characters is bad news, considering the fact that there are two major ingredients in a good mystery novel: a juicy mystery and interesting characters.

Right off the bat we can cross off one of these (guess which). The other one, however, still remains a factor in this novel: the mysteries in By The Time happen to be very, very juicy.

Protagonist John Cardinal is a reasonable, easy-going guy whose wife of over 30 years commits suicide. Despite knowing that his wife was bipolar and being aware of her long history of depression, the coroner’s report fails to convince Cardinal that she could have taken her own life. On top of that, Cardinal starts receiving malicious notes that plunge him further into grief. With this, Cardinal sets out on a personal crusade to find another cause of death. Perhaps . . . murder? As he goes along he begins to find an unnerving number of suicides. Though many people try to get him to quit and accept his wife’s suicide, Cardinal’s pursuit simply intensifies and eventually he finds his not-sotwisted ending.

As usual there is a subplot, led in this case by Cardinal’s trusty sidekick Lise Delorme, who is handed a child pornography case from the Toronto Police Department and all she has to go on is the background of the pictures she is given. What makes it even worse is that it’s the same man abusing the same little girl for a period of several years. Delorme wants nothing more than to catch the pedophile, but she has barely anything to work with.

Usually a subplot ties in with the main plot, but in this case there is only the most tenuous link between the two. It seems as though the subplot is only there because it is much more interesting than the main plot, though. One should be advised, however, that suicide and child pornography as constant themes have a tendency to both tug at your heart strings and cause you to gag a little.

However interesting the plot and subplot may be, the writing mechanics are erratic. The sentences by themselves are fluid, but Blunt doesn’t know how to properly use a thirdperson perspective. He switches back and forth with little or no indication and as a result I often found myself backtracking to try and find out from whose perspective I was reading. Besides this, he introduced a new major perspective halfway through the book. This made for an interesting read, but should have been introduced far earlier.

All in all, if you’re looking for a casual read, nothing special, then By the Time You Read This is an OK choice, though I do not recommend it — it’s far from being a “good” book; maybe a passable mystery novel, but not worth buying.