Giles Blunt (born 1952) is a Canadian novelist, poet, and screenwriter. His first novel, Cold Eye, was a psychological thriller set in the New York art world, which was made into the French movie Les Couleurs du diable (Allain Jessua, 1997).
Career Blunt is also the author of the John Cardinal novels, set in the small city of Algonquin Bay, in Northern Ontario. Blunt was born in Windsor, Ontario, and grew up in North Bay; Algonquin Bay is North Bay thinly disguised — for example, Blunt retains the names of major streets and the two lakes (Trout Lake and Lake Nipissing) that the town sits between, the physical layout of the two places is the same, and he describes Algonquin Bay as being in the same geographical location as North Bay. He studied English literature at the Mississauga campus of the University of Toronto.
The first Cardinal story, Forty Words for Sorrow, won the British Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger, and the second, The Delicate Storm, won the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award for best novel, as did the sixth, Until the Night. The 2010 John Cardinal novel Crime Machine was described as "a richly plotted work by one of Canada's best mystery novelists."
Blunt also has written No Such Creature, a "road novel" set in the American southwest, and Breaking Lorca, which is set in a clandestine jail in El Salvador in the 1980s. Twice nominated for the International Dublin Literary Award, his novels have been compared to the work of Ian Rankin and Cormac McCarthy.National Post, November 28, 2008.
Blunt's television credits include episodes of Law & Order, Street Legal, and Night Heat plus four seasons of Cardinal, a series adapted from his novels.
Awards and honours Blunt received the honorary degree of Doctor of Education on June 12, 2014, from Nipissing University. +Awards for Blunt's writingYearTitleAwardCategoryResult2001Forty Words for SorrowArthur Ellis AwardNovelRoger M. Sobin, The Essential Mystery Lists: For Readers, Collectors, and Librarians. Poisoned Pen Press, 2011. . pp. 191-194.Silver Dagger—2003The Delicate StormHammett Prize—2004Anthony AwardsNovelArthur Ellis AwardNovelMacavity AwardsNovel2006Black Fly SeasonArthur Ellis AwardNovel2007By the Time You Read ThisGold Dagger—2013Until the NightArthur Ellis AwardNovel"Giles Blunt, Steve Lillebuen take home Arthur Ellis Awards for crime writing". Canadian Press, May 31, 2013.
Published works
John Cardinal series
Other books
Screenwriting credits Year Title Notes1987 Night Heat Episode: The Cost of Doing Business1987-89 Diamonds Episodes: The Smiling Mortician and Dinosaur1991 Law & Order Episode: His Hour Upon the Stage1993 Street Legal Episode: Thicker Than Water
Other Year Title Notes2011 Republic of Doyle Script consultant, 2 episodes
References
External links
Online interview from CBC's Words at Large