Giles Blunt’s Crime Machine
Random House, 2010
John Cardinal and Lise Delorme #5

One bookish project I’ve been working on since early this summer is a list of series that I’m reading.

Series that I’m in the midst of the reading and series that I’ve been planning to read for so long that it feels like I’ve already started reading.

(With a side-project being a list of the other series that I want to read but which I haven’t yet started and which, may the Bookish Gods help me, I cannot start into until I’ve made some headway reading the already-incredibly-long aforementioned list of series underway).

At last count, there were 71 segments to this list, andI’m only telling you this because I trust you. Trust you not to make me feel like a complete freak. Because yes, I know that’s a bit beyond reasonable.

Nonetheless, the shame is inspiring.

Because it took me back to reading Giles Blunt’s Algonquin Bay series, featuring John Cardinal and Lise Delorme. I read Blackfly Season in September, and promptly followed up with By the Time You Read This and Crime Machine. (Please check out the earlier bookchats on those if you’d like a little more concrete information about the series. And, for even more, the author’s website.)

Click image for the Challenge Site

That brought me up to date with this series. Which is something I can say about very few series indeed. And you’d think this is something I’d celebrate but no, now I am fit to panic at not having an Algonquin Bay mystery in the wings.

This is the disadvantage of completing a series. And, so, it’s fortunate that I’ve started a couple of new series so that I don’t run out entirely. (But this isn’t freakish, right?!)

In the fourth book, I found the mystery of secondary interest and the overarching character narrative more engrossing and in this, the fifth, I found my interest weighted in the other direction.

This volume opens with a perspective that retained my interest throughout the novel and this individual’s connection to the “crime machine” of the title had me so engrossed that I caught myself jaw-dropped at one point whilst reading on the streetcar. Had my stop fallen in that segment of the journey, I would have had a good walk back because I was completely riveted.

It shakes things up a bit to have the narrative rearranged a little, focus shifted slightly, and that works in Crime Machine.

Has a mystery novel worked for you recently?