"By the Time You Read This" by Giles Blunt

Algonquin police detective John Cardinal has dealt with death before, but when the victim of a high rise fall turns out to be his wife, Catherine, he is devastated. The coroner rules the death a suicide. Case closed. Or is it? Consumed with grief, Cardinal has a hard time accepting that his wife has taken her own life, despite her many visits to the hospital for psychiatric treatment and her history of depression and bi polar disorder. When he starts receiving twisted sympathy cards in the mail, he decides to investigate the death as a homicide, despite being the only one who thinks so. Meanwhile Lise Deslarme, another detective on the force has joined with the Toronto police to try to catch a child pornographer believed to be working in Algonquin. Both investigation end up being related in ways both surprising and upsetting.
I really enjoyed this book and had a hard time putting it down. The author did an excellent job of portraying a man who had lost his wife to a suicide, but despite all the evidence, could not come to terms with it. With any storyline where the main character is overcome with grief, there is the risk of over doing it. Blunt shows us Cardinals grief and his resolve to find out what he perceives to be the truth about Catherine’s death without dipping into the realm of the unbelievable.
I also enjoyed how there was what appeared at first to be two separate cases that end up intertwining with each other. While at first you would think there would be no way for an apparent suicide and a child pornography ring to have commonality, the author connects them in surprising and believable ways. Once the connection was revealed, I didn’t feel cheated or that there was a huge leap in logic.
Now I usually don't like mysteries where the reader knows more than the characters (for example, who the killer/kidnapper/bad guy is). I find that the knowledge usually takes away some of the suspense. This was not the case in By the Time You read This. Even though we know more than the main characters do, it was still a very suspenseful book and there was some twists and turns I wasn't expecting. I have never read any of the Cardinal books by Giles Blunt before, but after reading By The Time You Read This, I will definitely be checking out his other novels.