I Bid Farewell to Chief Inspector Gamache

I’ve been a fan of Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Gamache mystery novels for years. I was fascinated by the village of Three Pines in Quebec, so small and out of the way that it can’t be found on most maps. The Villages residents – Olivier and Gabri at the Bistro, the off-the-wall poet Ruth Zardo, artist Clara Morrow, Myrna the bookstore owner, all had their stories on how they came to live there.  

I felt t home with Gamache’s family – his wife Reine-Marie and his grown children. His daughter Annie marries Jean-Guy Beauvoir, Gamache’s second-in-command at the Quebec Surete. And his police team. 

 

From novel to novel, and there are now 20 of them, I’ve followed the characters through personal crises, upheavals, near-death experiences, entanglements in crime, and overall well-done stories. But with No. 18, A World of Curiosities, Penny wallowed personal politics to color the story. I was encouraged with No. 19, The Grey Wolf, because she seemed to be returning to her narrative storyline. 

 

Then came No. 20, the sequel to The Grey Wolf. It’s entitled The Black Wolf. 

 

I have two problems with it. 

 

First, a considerable portion of what was conveyed in The Grey Wolf gets rewritten. What we knew then is not what we find out now. Appearances were deceiving. This happened in a significant way once before in on of Penny’s stories, when a village resident gets caught up in a crime and goes to prison after trial and conviction. In the next novel, what we knew turned out to be untrue, the character is redeemed, and all is well in Three Pines, after all. It happens again with The Black Wolf. It might work as an individual story, but it weakens the overall series. You begin to ask yourself, what else is going to get rewritten? 

 

My more serious problem is that Penny is once again slipping personal politics into the story. She includes the occasional mini-lecture, and the wise characters speak to what’s really right and true. But the heart of the story is the larger part of the problem. Those evil people south of the Canadian border are always up to no good.

 

Louise Penny

What happens is that personal politics overtakes the story. I stopped reading about page 200, just over halfway through. Maybe the story gets better. Maybe the politics goes away. But I decided I didn’t want to find out.

 

The fact is that I’m tired of politics overtaking everything, and that’s especially true for books I buy expecting to read a good story. I did not pay good money to read Louis Penny displaying her wisdom – or her version of wisdom – on current events and issues.  She’s taking pot shots and passing them off as deep insights from her characters. Conservatives are bad. Christians are bad. No one believes in church any more, except perhaps as a place to meet informants (because no one would ever think of going there for any other reason).

 

If you are of a progressive or leftist persuasion, you might think this is fine. I’m not; neither am I of a far-right persuasion. And I don’t think it’s fine. If you as a mystery writer are going to do this, then you need to slap a warning label on the cover.

 

So, I bid farewell to Chief Inspector Gamache. I will miss all the pastries and breads dripping in butter at Olivier and Gabri’s bistro. I won’t be reading about crazy Ruth Zardo the poet and her equally crazy duck Rosa. No more support and words of wisdom from Reine-Maries Gamache. 

 

No more anything from characters I’ve thought of as something like friends. 

 

Related:

 

My review of Kingdom of the Blind.

 

My review of Glass Houses.

 

My review of A Great Reckoning.

 

My review of The Long Way Home.

 

My review of How the Light Gets In.

 

My review of The Beautiful Mystery.

 

My review of The Hangman.

 

My review of Penny’s A Trick of the Light.

 

My review of Penny’s A Fatal Grace.

 

My review of Penny’s Still Life.

 

My review of Penny’s The Cruelest Month.

 

My review of Penny’s A Rule Against Murder.

 

My review of The Brutal Telling.

 

My review of Penny’s Bury Your Dead.

 

My review of A Better Man.

 

My review of All the Devils Are Here.

 

My review of The Madness of Crowds.

 

My review of A World of Curiosities.

 

My review of The Grey Wolf.

Some Monday Readings

 

Your phone is a fake house – Adam Aleksic at The Etymology Nerd.

 

Our Days Are Short – Terry Whalin at the Writing Life.

 

An Autumn View Over London from Westminster Cathedral – A London Inheritance.

 

How to Ask Timeless Questions – Joseph Epstein at The Free Press.

 

Thoughts on Ethan Frome – Michael Connolly at The Imaginative Conservative.

"The Grey Wolf" by Louise Penny

It starts as a series of seemingly unrelated events. Two unrelated people are killed, hundreds of kilometers apart, in the exact same execution style. An elderly visitor leaves a bottle of terrible-tasting liqueur at the bistro in Three Pines. An old coat belonging to Armand Gamache, head of Homicide for Quebec’s Surete, is stolen from his Montreal apartment, and then returned. In a pocket is a list of spices, and a single word – water. Then a young man, an activist for an environmental group, meets with Gamache – and run over in a car inches away from Gamache himself. The driver is later founded murdered. 

Gamache and his team, Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste, will soon learn that they are dealing with a planned terrorist act, designed to destabilize the government, institute a dictatorship, and involving officials at almost the very top of Canada’s political leadership. They will travel to remote monasteries, the Vatican, Washington, D.C., and a remote fishing village in Labrador, desperately trying to determine what’s planned and when.

 

Louise Penny

The Grey Wolf is the 19^th novel in the Armand Gamache series by Canadian author Louise Penny. It’s a gripping, creative fast-paced story, with an ending that keeps the reader on the edge of his seat to the very end. And while it does its predecessor novels proud, very little of the story involves Gamache’s home village of Three Pines and its collection of unusual residents. On the plus side, it avoids the trap its predecessor novel, A World of Curiosities, fell into, when we were given a bit too much of the author’s personal politics.

 

What it does have, however, is the promise of the next installment in the series. Because with a grey wolf, there is a black wolf.

 

Penny’s Chief Inspector Gamache novels have been bestsellers in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries. She’s received numerous awards, including a Crime Writers Association Dagger Award and the Agatha Award, and she’s been a finalist for the Edgar Award. In 2017, she received the Order of Canada for her contributions to Canadian culture. She lives near Montreal. 

 

Related:

 

My review of Kingdom of the Blind.

 

My review of Glass Houses.

 

My review of A Great Reckoning.

 

My review of The Long Way Home.

 

My review of How the Light Gets In.

 

My review of The Beautiful Mystery.

 

My review of The Hangman.

 

My review of Penny’s A Trick of the Light.

 

My review of Penny’s A Fatal Grace.

 

My review of Penny’s Still Life.

 

My review of Penny’s The Cruelest Month.

 

My review of Penny’s A Rule Against Murder.

 

My review of The Brutal Telling.

 

My review of Penny’s Bury Your Dead.

 

My review of A Better Man.

 

My review of All the Devils Are Here.

 

My review of The Madness of Crowds.

 

My review of A World of Curiosities.

 

Some Wednesday Readings

 

The Patron Subjects: Who were the Wertheimers, the family that sat for a dozen of John Singer Sargent’s paintings? – Jean Strouse at The American Scholar.

 

Fading Light – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian.

 

Monumental painting in SLAM’s collection only known survivor of its kind – St. Louis Art Museum. 

 

Bah Humbug: The Crime of Loneliness in Holiday Stories – Lindy Ryan at CrimeReads.

 

The Outsized Impact of George Cukor’s “Gaslight” – Bonnie Kistler at CrimeReads.

“A World of Curiosities” by Louise Penny

After reading The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny, her 17^th Inspector Armand Gamache mystery novel, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the next one, only that there would likely be a next one. Something seemed off with The Madness of Crowds, and I couldn’t precisely say what it was, only that when you try to write fiction about a COVID pandemic, what you write can easily be out-of-date by the time the book is published.  

The 18^th Gamache novel is A World of Curiosities. The title is taken from an actual artwork, “The Paston Treasure,” painted about 1663 and now in the Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery in Norfolk, England. The artist is unknown; the painting is not signed. In A World of Curiosities, what looks like the painting is discovered in a hidden room in the home of Myrna Landers, who lives and operates the bookstore in Three Pines, where the Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache now live. On close examination, however, it’s realized that the painting is really a copy of the original, with a considerable number of changes.

 

How did it get there? How and when was the room hidden, when even Myrna Landers herself didn’t know it was there? What does it have to do with the death of a woman who may, or may not have, committed suicide in a nearby town? And someone in Three Pines is not who they say they are and may be determined to destroy Gamache and his family.

 

Penny combines the story of the painting with the back story of who Gamache and his chief lieutenant (and son-in-law) Jean-Guy Beauvoir came to work together – a horrific case in a small, isolated provincial town in Quebec in which the body of woman was found in a lake. It turned out that the woman has been prostituting her two young children, a brother and a sister. And now the two are living in Three Pines, and one, or both, may be psychopaths.

 

This is a dark, dark story. It has a fascinating, involved premise based on the painting. Penny writes a good story; she’s a wonderful storyteller. The last 50 pages will have you jumping up every two or three minutes to take a break from the tension.

 

Louise Penny

What is disappointing, however, was something too many authors seem to be falling into. Instead of simply telling a story, some authors feel compelled to share their political views with the reader. Putting words in the mouths on beloved characters isn’t going to convince me that the author’s political views are correct. And it seems forced. I know now how Penny feels about gun control, police forces, the Catholic church, and religion in general. And it’s a problem for the story. Based strictly on the expressed political views, I predicted who the killer would be. And I got it exactly right.  All of this detracts from what would be an otherwise fascinating, if very dark, story.

 

I bought the book in anticipation of reading another good Armand Gamache mystery. The story premise is indeed a good one. But injecting personal political beliefs into it makes it something less than what it might have been. I don’t need to spend $30 to learn about how a mystery writer feels about contemporary political issues.

 

Related:

 

My review of Kingdom of the Blind.

 

My review of Glass Houses.

 

My review of A Great Reckoning.

 

My review of The Long Way Home.

 

My review of How the Light Gets In.

 

My review of The Beautiful Mystery.

 

My review of The Hangman.

 

My review of Penny’s A Trick of the Light.

 

My review of Penny’s A Fatal Grace.

 

My review of Penny’s Still Life.

 

My review of Penny’s The Cruelest Month.

 

My review of Penny’s A Rule Against Murder.

 

My review of The Brutal Telling.

 

My review of Penny’s Bury Your Dead.

 

My review of A Better Man.

 

My review of All the Devils Are Here.

 

My review of The Madness of Crowds.

Painting: The Paston Treasure, oil on cavas circa 1663 by an unknown artist; Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery.

"The Madness of Crowds" by Louise Penny

A new Inspector Armand Gamache mystery novel by Louise Penny is an event. Each story generally goes right to the top of the bestsellers’ lists, and with good reason. Gamache, his Quebec Surete colleagues, and his neighbors in the village of three Pines have legions of fans worldwide. And his fans have followed Gamache through thick and thin, from Montreal to Paris, from his unmasking political skullduggery at the highest levels of Canadian provincial government to his nearly dying. 

We love Gamache and how he solves mysteries. We love his colleagues Isabel Lacoste and Jean-guy Beauvoir, who also happens to be his son-in-law. We love Gamache’s wife, Reine-Narie. And the Three Pines neighbors: bistro owners Olivier and Gabri, poet Ruth Zardo and her foul-mouthed duck Rosa, artist Clare Morrow, and bookstore operator Myrna.

 

The Madness of Crowds is the seventeenth Gamache novel, and it helps to know two things about the book. It was written during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was written before the emergence of the delta variant of COVID. It is set just after the pandemic has ended, with the widespread availability of vaccines. The people are Three Pines are coming together for a Christmas and New Year’s celebration, the first such celebration post-pandemic. 

 

Joining the celebration is a Sudanese woman nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, one who endured mass rape, torture, and disfigurement to go on to create a foundation for women and children. She is a worldwide celebrity, and the residents of Three Pines are initially thrilled. Until they get to know her, and discover that sainthood often involves a brutal, caustic personality.

 

Louise Penny

Gamache is called to a local university, to provide security for a speaker with unpopular views, in this case, the articulation of support for eugenics and the “culling” of the population, particularly during events like pandemics. Inspired by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, eugenics was especially popular in the late nineteenth and first-half of the twentieth centuries. In the United States, it was associated with Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. In Europe, it was associated with Nazi theories of racial superiority, and it was the Holocaust that dealt what many thought was a death blow to eugenics. Biotechnology, however, has brought it back, although in a different form and using different names.

 

It is a woman professor from British Columbia whom Gamache must protect, even as he finds what she says and believes to be abhorrent. Contributing to this abhorrence is that fact that Gamache’s baby granddaughter Idola, the child of Jean-Guy and Gamache’s daughter Annie, has Down’s Syndrome. 

 

Penny swirls all these currents and crosscurrents together, in the way only she can, to tell a fascinating story. Except something seems slightly off-kilter in The Madness of Crowds, and it’s not easy to say specifically what it is. It may be the disconnect of writing about a pandemic that has supposedly just passed, when the reader’s current reality is that COVID-19 is still very much with us. It may be that it takes several chapters before the reader knows what, exactly, are the controversial views the characters find to be so hateful. It may be that the murder, when it does finally occur well into the story, is connected to human experiments in the 1950s and 1960s. Using these experiments, the question of eugenics, and Sudanese atrocities as narrative devices in the novel runs the risk of a story without a center, and the book comes close to that. 

 

There’s also a sense that the author did not deal well with what happened during the first year of COVID-19, and it surfaces several times in the experiences of her characters. It is Gamache’s wife who tell us what happened to her husband and son-in-law during the lockdown; Gamache and Jean-Guy make little reference to it.

 

I love the Gamache stories. I’ve been amazed with the first 16 books and how Penny consistently wrote on exceptional mystery novel after another. The Madness of Crowds is a good story, but it might have needed a simpler plot line; the story of the Sudanese woman, for example, could have been a separate Gamache story all to itself.

 

But we remain faithful to the inspector, his colleagues, his family, and his friends. 

 

Related:

 

My review of Kingdom of the Blind.

 

My review of Glass Houses.

 

My review of A Great Reckoning.

 

My review of The Long Way Home.

 

My review of How the Light Gets In.

 

My review of The Beautiful Mystery.

 

My review of The Hangman.

 

My review of Penny’s A Trick of the Light.

 

My review of Penny’s A Fatal Grace.

 

My review of Penny’s Still Life.

 

My review of Penny’s The Cruelest Month.

 

My review of Penny’s A Rule Against Murder.

 

My review of The Brutal Telling.

 

My review of Penny’s Bury Your Dead.

 

My review of A Better Man.

 

My review of All the Devils Are Here.

“All the Devils Are Here” by Louise Penny

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Quebec Surete is back with a new story, except it doesn’t happen in Quebec and none the regular characters from the village of Three Pines are present.

Gamache and his wife Reine-Marie are in Paris for the birth of their fourth grandchild. His son-in-law and former No. 2 Jean-Guy Beauvoir and the Gamaches’ daughter Anny are having their second child, and the birth is imminent. Jean-Guy is working for a large and globally known engineering firm. Their son Daniel Gamache and his wife Roslyn have lived in Paris for some years and have two daughters. Daniel works in investment banking.

In the previous 15 Gamache novels by Louise Penny, we don’t really know much about Daniel and his family. In All the Devils Are Here, we find out why. Daniel and his father are estranged and have been since Daniel was a boy. Gamache has never understood what happened between them. Paris holds other attractions; it’s the city where Armand proposed to Reine-Marie, and it’s the city where Armand’s godfather, 93-year-old Stephen Horowitz, lived for many years and where he still maintains an apartment. 

Louise Penny

Stephen joins the Gamache family for dinner one Friday night. As they leave the restaurant, Stephen is critically injured by a hit-and-run truck. Gamache suspects the attack was deliberate. When the body of a 75-year-old engineer, also from Montreal, is found in Stephen’s apartment, killed with what was likely a military weapon, Gamache knows that something bad is happening. Over the next three days, the chief inspector and his family will face mystery, danger, and peril. Someone is desperate to find something that Stephen had, something he was apparently preparing to take to a board meeting of the engineering firm where Jean-guy works. 

All the Devils Are Here maintains the core characters – Gamache and Jean-Guy – of the previous novels. It also retains the feel and distinct characteristics of the series – a high-level conspiracy, a story that peels like an onion (often including the smell and the tears), and the dogged determination of the inherently decent Gamache. What’s different, other than the setting and the absence of the regular village residents, is how much we learn about Gamache’s family and his own personal history.

It’s a big story, wonderfully told by a master storyteller.

Related:

My review of Kingdom of the Blind.

My review of Glass Houses.

My review of A Great Reckoning.

My review of The Long Way Home.

My review of How the Light Gets In.

My review of The Beautiful Mystery.

My review of The Hangman.

My review of Penny’s A Trick of the Light.

My review of Penny’s A Fatal Grace.

My review of Penny’s Still Life.

My review of Penny’s The Cruelest Month.

My review of Penny’s A Rule Against Murder.

My review of The Brutal Telling.

My review of Penny’s Bury Your Dead.

My review of A Better Man.