Book review – Blindshot – The tranquillity that surrounds the Quebec township of Beaufort is violently shattered one day when Paul Carignan, a well-to-do financier, is struck by a stray bullet inside his massive country estate that is called “Valhalla”.
As Paul fights for his life, an investigation is conducted by Tom Doran (aka “Brooder”), the town’s deputy chief of police, into the shooting and why it happened. As Doran pursues the case, he finds out that a code of silence has swept over Beaufort, in which many of its prominent citizens and landowners don’t want Doran to find out who is behind the shooting. As well, he discovers that Carignan didn’t have a lot of friends in Beaufort, especially Jeffrey Lennox, a rather angry, unbalanced hunter who enjoys shooting game on Carignan’s property.
But when Carignan dies from his wounds, and the investigation ends up hitting a lot of dead ends, Paul’s sons Jack and Noah, along with their best friend Zeph, decide to take the law into their own hands to find out who killed their father and why. And this puts their mother (and Paul’s divorced wife) Catherine into a moral dilemma over whether she should support their sons’ methodology of solving a violent crime that hits close to home and seeking a sense of justice and closure.
This forms the basis of writer Denis Coupal’s exciting debut thriller Blindshot.
This book is a whirlwind of a psychological thriller, which combines territoriality, revenge, savage justice, ethics and plenty of hidden dark secrets that pervade a quiet small town.
What I enjoyed about the book is Coupal’s ability to keep the reader in a constant state of suspense (not to mention at the edge of your seat), as he leads the, through every clue, crime scene recreation, and red herring that puts the Carignan family, Deputy Doran and the town of Beaufort to the breaking point that explodes into the savagely violent scenario that involves the two Carignan sons and three of the suspects within the confines of Valhalla. And the surprise finale that is unveiled in the book’s final sentences will certainly give you that struck-by-lightning feeling.
Blindshot is a prime example of what the ideal crime thriller should read like. And if this book is any indication, then Denis Coupal certainly has a bright future as a writer of crime thrillers.
Other book reviews on mtltimes.ca and totimes.ca by Stuart Nulman
