title: Forty Words for Sorrow
author:  Giles Blunt 
description: <blockquote>It gets dark early in Algonquin Bay. Take a drive up Airport Hill at four o' clock on a February afternoon, and when you come back half an hour later the streets of the city will glitter below you in the dark like so many runways. The forty-sixth parallel may not be all that far north; you can be much farther north and still be in the United States, and even London, England, is a few degrees closer to the North Pole. But this is Ontario, Canada, we're talking about, and Algonquin Bay in February is the very definition of winter. Algonquin Bay is snowbound, Algonquin Bay is quiet, Algonquin Bay is very, very cold.</blockquote> Read the evocative opening of Giles Blunt's novel and you may begin to understand why Tony Hillerman says this is the novel he wishes he'd written. Keep reading, and you may wonder why other authors haven't joined the vicarious narrative line. With devastating precision, Blunt effortlessly weaves together strands of lives both led and taken in this tiny Canadian town, limning a hauntingly paradoxical picture of isolation and community, two sides of a fragile bulwark against violence.
zlib_text: **“LET ME BE YOUR SECRET LOVER …**  
   **I’LL DEVOTE MY LIFE TO**  
   **BRINGING YOU PLEASURE.”**
  
  “You promise me pleasure but not happiness?” Eleanor questioned breathlessly.
  
  “No one can promise happiness to another, however much he may wish it,” Simon
  said softly. “You torment me when you hold me at arm’s length and deny me. Put
  me out of my misery.” His burning mouth trailed a fiery path down her throat
  and his arms tightened about her.
  
  “Please don’t! When you press me to your heart I want to …” She caught the
  words back guiltily.
  
  “You consume me,” he whispered savagely.
  
  The swift intake of her breath told him exactly what effect he had on her.
  Eleanor had to light him and herself both. The feel of his magnificent hands
  upon her was like an aphrodisiac.
  
  “Let me go!” she said, desperately summoning her anger.
  
  He removed his hands from her. “How ironic that after winning every joust
  today, I should lose the final one. The only joust that means anything to me
  …”
  
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