"There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts."
--- Mahatma Gandhi
Penny’s 13th novel featuring Chief Superintendent. Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec is as riveting a tale as Penny's many fans have come to expect. The novel opens with Gamache, the chief witness for the prosecution of a brutal murder, being grilled by the Crown Prosecutor in a stifling hot Montreal courtroom.
The presiding judge Maureen Corriveau, who’s trying her first homicide case, is taken aback by the animosity between the Crown Prosecutor and his own witness. She begins to suspect that something untoward is going on in her courtroom.
The story of the murder, committed in Gamache's home village of Three Pines, is slowly revealed in flashbacks. It begins at a Halloween party, where the evening's merriment is disturbed by the presence of a silent figure robed and masked all in black. The next day the figure shows up in the middle of the village green, standing silent, motionless, and staring. And the next day, and the next. The entire village is unnerved. Then, the figure is gone, as mysteriously as it appeared. The village begins to relax --- until Madame Gamache finds a black-masked and robed body in the cellar under the village church.
The shocking death brings back memories of other misdeeds that plagued the village in the distant past and seems to be related to Gamache's current preoccupation: the out of control opioid epidemic and the violent drug cartels fighting to control the trade are overwhelming the forces of law and order.
All the familiar and much-loved characters from Three Pines and the Sûreté are present and each contributes in his or her own way to the shattering climax.
Click HERE to read an interview with Louise Penny from CBS News.
Click HERE to read a review from the Seattle Times.
Click HERE to read a review from the Washington Post.
Click HERE to read a review from the Christian Science Monitor.
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