John Cardinal Mystery Series by Giles Blunt
Relax & read - mystery list descriptions do not reveal major plot points.

Character's Personality:  John Cardinal is in his late forties, early fifties.  He has a college-age daughter Kelly and a wife Catherine diagnosed with major bipolar disorder who shuttles in and out of mental institutions. Cardinal is a strong, silent, thoughtful type who loves his job and enjoys woodworking during his sparse free-time. Lise DeLorme, his partner, is both a woman in a male-dominated field and a French-Canadian in the "British" part of Canada, and she's understandably a bit defensive about it.

Character's Occupation: homicide detective

Character's Culture / Ethnicity: He's an unspecified white person, she's French-Canadian.

Character - Other Notable Traits: 

Location and Time Period: Contemporary Ontario, Canada in the fictional small town Algonquin Bay based on the real town of North Bay.

Mystery Subgenre: Police procedural

Objectionable Material: Profanity, medium to extreme violence

Series Description: (brought to you by kat impatientreader.com)

Series List: Purple Copyright Date  = I've read it. Title links go to Amazon.com product pages.

1. Forty Words for Sorrow (2000). Cardinal gets put back on a case from which he had been previously removed due to his obsessive behavior:  a murdered teenage Chippewa girl. He turns up a pattern of missing, possibly murdered children. Soon he's racing to track down the killer. Meanwhile, his new partner DeLorme is secretly tasked to investigate him for corruption, specifically his mysterious connection with a known drug dealer.  It's been years since I read this, but I remember enjoying it.
2. The Delicate Storm (2003). During a horrendous once-in-a-century ice storm, Cardinal and DeLorme must investigate two homicides – an American accountant, and the town doctor – that uncover a labyrinthine plot involving political struggles (a Quebec separatist group) and rivalries between Canadian law-enforcement branches.
3. Black Fly Season (2005). When a young woman wanders into town acting strangely and suffering amnesia, hospital personnel find that she has a bullet in her brain. She passes into the hands of Cardinal and DeLorme whose quest to find her would-be murderers leads them into a violent war between drug dealers and a psychopathic occultist who practices a lurid form of voodoo (extreme violence here – beware).  This book didn't wow me, but it was a competent read.  I couldn't empathize with the young woman due to the ongoing foolishness of her actions.  I understood her motives (protecting someone close to her) but her choices made me stop caring about her. By contrast, I always felt involved when Cardinal got into danger.
4. By the Time You Read This (2006) aka Fields of Grief. When someone close to Cardinal dies, he starts getting obscene, gloating messages that make him suspect the dead person was murdered. Meanwhile DeLorme has to track down a pedophile who posts graphic photos on a website of a little girl who may have been kidnapped locally.

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