Reverberations

Just before running away to the north shore of Lake Superior, I read a glowing review of Louise Penny's new book A Great Reckoning. Then Dale Stahl told me he'd just read it and that it was good.

I was wandering the tourist village of Grand Marais and happened upon a book store. A real book store. It actually had a copy of A Great Reckoning. How could I resist? I had time to sit on the rocky beach, look at the big lake, and read.

In fact, I didn't read the book until I'd returned from the north woods and headed up to the tiny lake called Little Blake. So I watched the geese and a couple swans while reading at place called Sidetrack.

This is a book that has its roots firmly in the earlier books Penny has written. Ostensibly the book is about the continuing crusade of police Commander Armand Gamache to clean up the corruption in the Sûreté of Québec. This time he takes on the task of rooting out evil in the Sûreté Academy. His methodology is obtuse, but marginally understandable.

But then there's a suicide? or was it a murder? And four cadets in the Sûreté Academy. One
of whom stands out as an example of the old order and one as an example of the rejection or the old order. Oh, and there's a century-old map found among the old newspapers and magazines used in the original insulation of an old building that was renovated.

Penny

One of the players in all this is Gamache's old friend and colleague who was caught up in the clean-up regime of the Sûreté. The love/hate and trust/mistrust nature of the relationship fits into all this well.

If you've read The Nature of the Beast, you'll be on track to easily follow the details of this book. If not, you might have to pay attention to things inferred. Or you can read The Nature of the Beast. It's good.

Have you read A Great Reckoning? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world.

---

• The publisher's web site
• Robert Croan's review in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette
• Marilyn Stasio's review in The New York Times
• Maureen Corrigan's review in the Washington Post

---

Uncomfortable cozy

This year I have read a gut-wrenching mystery set in Kenya, a tale of rogue bankers and child molesters in Iceland, a bait and switch mystery in Norway, a narrative about recycling and reuse, essays about the universe, a rather pleasant story about a village in Alaska, and an imagining of Plato in the 21st century USA. Except for Cold Storage, Alaska, it seemed pretty steep for me in my spare time. So, I figured I could pick up a "cozy" and just read through the mystery.

A cozy is a rather demeaning lable given to a mystery that keeps the awfulest stuff and sex in the background. Most "locked room" mysteries are cozies. (Some become horror stories, but that's a cinematic detour.) The locked room mysteries were a European invention where murders happened in isolated, old manor houses or castles and all the people involved were suspects and were confined to the house or the dining room or the parlor until the murder was solved, the storm abated, or help arrived from far away.

To me the term cozy descirbed all those murder mysteries that took place in TV's Cabot Cove, Maine. So I was in the mood for something entertaining and undemanding.

I picked up Louise Penny's How the Light Gets In. Penny's books that I'd read before (Still Life and A Fatal Grace) were pretty cozy, and I expected something similar. That's not what I read.

Well, it's my fault for not reading all of the Inspector Gamache novels. One of the earlier books hinted at nefarious plots in the Quebec police department. But it sounded like office politics. How interesting could office politics be?

Well, it wasn't just office politics and How the Light Gets In isn't just a mystery and isn't quite a cozy.

A lot of the story is set in Penny's village of Three Pines (her version of Cabot Cove), but the narrative extends to Montreal and northern Quebec. One part of the story was about the death of the last of the Ouellet Quintuplets (Penny's version of Ontario's Dionne quintuplets). [The Dionne quints were a big deal for my mother who was 11 years old when the 5 little girls became popular celebrities.] If Penny had stopped with that story, the book would have been a real cozy.

But the other huge story is about political and police corruption and has its roots in Inspector Gamache's first big case thirty years earlier. Some of it is told in explanations offered by the author. But there's a LOT that's not told and that makes the ending pretty lame. Hey, Louise Penny, do you like the Improbability Prize I offer this plot?

That ending aside, Penny creates great characters and tells good stories. And the action scenes near the end of the book were good enough to convince me to finish the book early in the evening so they wouldn't keep me awake at midnight. I enjoyed this. And Inspector Gemache is likely to make a reappearance even if he's retired from the Quebec police. I'll look for another (its publication date is August 26), but I won't automatically assume it's a cozy.

Have you read How the Light Gets In? What did you think of it? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you think.

---

• The author's web site
• Maureen Corrigan's review in The Washington Post
• Marilyn Stasio's review in The New York Times
• Yvonne Zipp's review in The Christian Science Monitor
• Lesa's review at Lesa's Book Critiques

---

Okay, okay, last minute discovery. The CBC has produced a two-hour television movie of Penny's first book, Still Life. Check out the promo.

---

New from Quebec

Dale Stahl wrote that the new Louise Penny novel, The Beautiful Mystery, is a good one. (He also takes credit for getting Fred Vargas' name on my to-read list.)

"[Penny's new novel is] not, like the earlier ones set the little village of Three Pines. Instead the story takes Chief Inspector Gamache to a remote monastery in the wilds of Quebec. Gamache and his assistant Beauvoir move in to the monastery to figure out which of the monks killed one of their brethren. The investigation is complicated by the fact that the monks have all taken a vow of silence -- except for their chanting during midnight masses.

"There is a side mystery about the origins of Gilbertine chants, and, as in earlier books, a strong undercurrent of the simmering feud between Gamache and the corrupt hierarchy of the Sûreté du Québec (Quebec Provincial Police). There's definitely a sequel to follow, hopefully in which Gamache finally makes his play to rid the Sûreté of corruption!"

That recommendation might send me back to read another Louise Penny novel.

Has anyone else read The Beautiful Mystery? How did you react? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought.

---

One other part of Dale's note was that he's begun a book by Jussi Adler-Olsen, The Keeper of Lost Causes.  He also likes this one. Set in Copenhagen, it features Detective Carl Mork and Dept Q. It's Adler-Olsen's 2007 novel that was titled Kvinden i buret in Danish. We'll hear more later. Won't we Dale?

---

• Louise Penny's web site
• Robert Wiersema's review in The Toronto Globe and Mail
• Maureen Corrigan's review in The Washington Post
• Nina Sankovitch's review in Huffington Post

Jussi Adler-Olsen at Good Reads

---

---

The last of Louise Penny's books

I was happy I got to read the first of Louise Penny's books, Still Life. It was charming and interesting.

So I picked up a second one, A Fatal Grace, when I was at the library. I evern renewed it because there were so many interruptions over the holidays (if grand daughters can be safely called interruptions.)

It took too long to read. It wasn't as charming or as interesting. The plot was far fetched. Most of the interesting characters from Still Life were in this book, but they weren't as interesting the second time around.

I did finish the book, so it wasn't awful. It just wasn't as wonderful as the first one of Penny's that I read.

Tiny, improbable village in southern Quebec where a second murder in as many years takes place. What are the odds? About the same as the odds of there being a second-hand book store there that supports its owner, as Penny contends. Now, I've read Carol Bly and Kathleen Norris and I'm willing to concede that there's probably more diversity in rural towns than I saw growing up in one. But the diversity in Three Pines stretches my sense of the possible. And like Cabot Cove, Maine, the violent crime rate is pretty high. I wouldn't want to live there and I doubt I'll visit again through Louise Penny's novels. (It's not the last of Louise Penny's books, but it's probably the last one I'll read.)

Have you read A Fatal Grace (published in Canada as Dead Cold and Sous la glace)? What did you think of it? Read other of Louise Penny's mysteries? What did you think of them? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought.

---

• The author's web site
• Carol Wallace's review at Book Group of One
• Poet B. Morrison's review on her version of a reading blog

---

---

Little Canadian treasure

I'm pretty sure I know how Still Life got on my "to read" list. It was one of those innocent-sounding questions that Dale Stahl asked at the end of one of his e-mails, "Have you ever read anything by Louise Penny?"

My answer was, "No," but based on his recommendation, I put her name on the list.

I'm really glad I did. Tana French probably puts extra efforts into the beginnings of her books and Louise Penny must put extra effort into dialogue that reveals characters. And she creates characters that are more than names and titles.

For example, her Inspector Gamache has to tell his wife that he can't attend his grand-niece's christening because there's been a murder.

The scene unfolds: "'Did you murder this person?' Reine-Marie asked her husband when [he] told her he wouldn't be at the two-hour service on hard benches in a strange church.

'If I did, I'll find out...'

'"I'll just tell them you're drunk, again,' she said when he asked whether her family would be disappointed he wasn't there.

'"Didn't you tell them I was in a treatment center last time I missed a family gathering?'

'Well, I guess it didn't work.'

'Very sad for you.'

'I'm a martyr to my husband,' said Reine-Marie, getting into the driver's seat. 'Be safe, dear heart,' she said..."

Penny doesn't have to say much more about that relationship later in the book. Similar exchanges illuminate other characters and relationships.

And there's a story -- a complicated plot. For a story set in a small Quebec town near the U.S. border, there are quite a few reasonable suspects for the murder of a beloved, retired school teacher. There's even that chance that the death was a hunting accident, which caused a frightened outsider to run away. If Penny's later books take place in the same little town, I'll begin to suspect the Cabot Cove ("Murder She Wrote") syndrome, and I'll be very disappointed.

Right now I'm very happy to have read Still Life. It seems obvious to me that Penny loves the place and characters she created. If she keeps Inspector Gamache and his assisstant Jean Guy Beauvior and sends them around Quebec, she can avoid creating a death trap village like the one Richard Levinson and William Link created for Angela Lansbury.

I highly recommend this one. Good characters, good story telling, no great gore, no sex (not even a kiss), few improbabilities, and no super heroism. Oh, and there are some literary references (Auden, Davidson, and Plessner) that are not out of place.

Have you read Still Life by Louise Penny or another of Penny's books? Write and tell this little bit of the world what you thought of them.

---

• Penny's web site
• A review by BookGal on her blog
• Three reviews at Epinions

---

---