A Better Man by Louise Penny

A Better Man: A Novel by Louise Penny --- 437 pages including Acknowledgements. #15 in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series.

The air is thick with anxiety as Sûreté du Québec agents gather in the conference room for the Monday morning meeting of the homicide department.

Today is Armand Gamache’s first day back since his suspension and then demotion from Chief Superintendent of the entire force, to his former  position as head of homicide. Complicating matters, he will be temporarily sharing the duties with his former second-in-command and current son-in-law, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, who will shortly be leaving to take up a new job in private industry in Paris. And taking Gamache's daughter Annie, and his grandson Honoré, with him.

Making matters worse, a storm of toxic social media attacks is being orchestrated against Gamache by his political enemies as he faces his first assignment – to find a missing woman, whose abusive husband is the immediate suspect in Vivienne Godin's disappearance.

The search for Vivienne is complicated by catastrophic spring flooding throughout Quebec. Ice jams are threatening the bridges, and the pressure of the water is threatening dams.  Gamache's own village of Three Pines is at risk, as the usually sleepy Rivière Bella Bella breaks its banks. A general emergency is declared and desperate efforts are underway to save towns and cities, dams and bridges and power plants from destruction..

As Gamache and Beauvoir lead the search for Vivienne, they develops a profound empathy for her distraught father. Vivienne makes them think of Annie. Suddenly the case becomes personal. Each is haunted by the terrible question, how would you feel, if it was your daughter, your wife?

As the rivers rise, and the social media onslaught rages, Gamache finds a body in the Bella Bella, just upriver from Three Pines. That close to home. The victim's father, overwhelmed with grief and guilt, becomes obsessed with vengeance.

Now the question nagging Gamache and Beauvoir shifts.

What would you do, to prevent your loved one's killer from getting away with it?

With each novel in the series, Penny just gets better and better. 

Click HERE to read the * review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from the Christian Science Monitor.

Click HERE to read the review from the San Diego Union Tribune.

Click HERE for the review from the Pittsburg Post-Gazette.

Click HERE to read the review from criminalelement.com

Still Life by Louise Penny

Still Life by Louis Penny
(Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #1)
293 pages / 9 hrs, 38 mins

"Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montreal and yet a world away. Jane Neal, a long-time resident of Three Pines, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it's a tragic hunting accident and nothing more but Gamache smells something foul this holiday season...and is soon certain that Jane died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter."
--from the publisher

I'm finally reading the first in the series.  It's an engaging introduction to the interesting characters Penny created and a unique mystery.  It is also the winner of several awards.  I gave it 4 out of 5 stars.

A Great Reckoning by Louis Penny

A Great Reckoning: A Novel by Louise Penny --- 389 pages

Another beautiful book in Penny's Chief Inspector Gamache series (number 12 to be precise), set in Quebec.  It's almost impossible to categorize Penny's work: these are crime novels in one sense, but only in the same sense that Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is a crime story.

They are explorations of what it means to be human, the mismatch between what happens and what we think is happening, and the small but sometimes fatal difference that can make.  In a recent interview Penny says her books are not about murder but about poetry, and that she works through six or seven drafts to pare down her story and her words until only the most essential remain. One reviewer suggests that the essence of this book is what the old owe to the young in their care.  Those who have followed the Chief Inspector through his career will know that he has labored long to root out corruption in the Sûreté du Québec. Now he has left retirement to become the Commander of the Sûreté Academy, the college where new recruits receive their training --- and he suspects --- the tainted source from which the corruption flows.  And the first lesson Gamache attempts to teach these cadets is "Don't believe everything you think." 

If you've never read Louise Penny, start at the beginning with Still Life, and enjoy a literary feast!

Click HERE to watch an interview with Louise Penny at the Book Expo America 2016.

Click HERE to read the review from the Washington Post.

Click HERE to read the review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read the review from the New York Times.

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny

The Long Way Home: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel by Louise Penny --- 373 pages

I stumbled onto Louis Perry's Chief Inspector Gamache series just a few years ago and I was hooked from the start. She writes murder mysteries, but she turns them into meditations on the human condition, and the nature of good and evil, and whether the soul can survive the slings and arrows of misfortune.

This tenth book in the series is very interesting. The complex story arc of the previous nine novels culminated with a shattering intensity in last year's How The Light Gets In, which may well be Penny's masterpiece. Now, in The Long Way Home, Armand Gamache and those he cares about are trying to pick up the pieces and remake their lives. Gamache is still coming to terms with all that has happened, and feeling his way into his new life of retirement in the village of Three Pines, when fate and a friend in desperate need force him back out into the world in search of a man with a sin-sick soul, on a journey to a desolate land at the edge of the world, a journey that will end in damnation or redemption.

Fans of  P.D. James, Colin Dexter, James Lee Burke or Donna Leon may enjoy Louise Penny.

Click HERE and HERE to read two excellent reviews of The Long Way Home.