By Paul Carrier
Armand Gamache had his hands full back in the day, before he retired as the chief of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec, that Candian province's police force. Not only was he in charge of the department's murder investigations, but he almost died in the line of duty, and he played a pivotal role in ferreting out a rat's nest of corruption that was destroying the agency from within.
Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, eventually retired to the tiny, bucolic village of Three Pines, deep in the Québec countryside southeast of Montréal. The isolated hamlet has no cell-phone service and, as Louise Penny repeatedly reminds us in several of her novels, it doesn't even appear on any provincial maps.
But the thought of Gamache puttering around in the yard or spending untold hours hanging out with locals in the village bistro wouldn't make for much of a novel, at least in terms of suspense. So in this 12th installment of Penny's popular mystery series,, the famed (and former) cop finds himself in harness once again, this time as commander of the academy that trains incoming Sûreté agents.
In theory, it should be a cozy assignment, but of course that's not the case. The academy, it turns out, is the last bastion of the decay that previously plagued the entire Sûreté. Gamache is determined to set things right, by destroying the academy's brutal, authoritarian, fraud-plagued culture, which trained agents to view the public as an enemy to be subdued, rather than a citizenry to be protected.
Gamache's mission becomes all the more complex when Serge Leduc, a dishonest and malevolent professor who effectively ran the place under the previous regime, is found murdered in his rooms on campus. Leduc was shot in the head with his own gun, but the crime scene makes it clear that this was no suicide.
As is usually the case in a good mystery, potential suspects abound.
Did a cadet at the academy murder Leduc? Or a fellow professor, such as the lonely, broken Michel Brébeuf? Could the local mayor, who admits to having prayed for Leduc's death, have killed him? Perhaps Gamache himself pulled the trigger. The former homicide chief despised Leduc, and only kept him on as a faculty member to give Gamache time to collect evidence against Leduc and pave the way for his prosecution.
The murder investigation takes an odd turn, thanks to an old, mystifying map that had been hidden in a wall in the Three Pines bistro, only to be discovered during renovations. Shortly before Leduc is murdered, Gamache makes four copies of the map and gives them to four cadets, whom he assigns the task of deciphering who created the strangely symbolic map and why. Murder investigators later find one of those copies in Leduc's bedroom. It's the map that belonged to Amelia Choquet, a freshman cadet who quickly becomes a prime suspect.
Choquet is bright and conscientious, but a very atypical police recruit. The 19-year-old woman has a history of prostitution anf drug use. She has spiked hair, multiple piercings, myriad tattoos and an antisocial attitude. Leduc had rejected her application for admission before Gamache took over, but Gamache reversed that decision and admitted her, despite -- or perhaps because of -- a secret lurking in her family history. It is a crucially important secret, and one that is not revealed until the novel draws to a close.
A Great Reckoning is a murder mystery, of course, but it's more than that. In typical fashion, Penny, ever the master storyteller, fills her tale with myriad unanswered questions as she builds to a climax that solves every puzzle and transforms the seemingly tangential into an essential part of the storyline. In a clever bit of plotting, Penny reveals the motive for Leduc's murder some time before she finally discloses who killed him.
Fans of the Gamache novels will be pleased to see the return of Penny's cadre of regulars, with the wise, avuncular and erudite Gamache topping the list. The colorful denizens of Three Pines are back once again: partners Olivier and Gabri, who own the bistro and the bed and breakfast; Myrna, the city psychologist turned small-town bookseller; Clara, the noted artist. And, of course, Ruth, the brilliant but cranky old poet who lives with Rosa, a pet duck who always seems to be softly quacking "fuck, fuck, fuck" in her sleep.
The interplay among these close friends provides a fine counterpoint to the tension created by the investigation. We're reminded, for example, that Ruth has a habit of taking books and cups and all manner of things from her neighbors' homes, quietly and without permission. She believes in "precycling," which Penny describes as "an evolution of recycling" that allows Ruth to make use of things before people actually throw them out.
The final pages of this satisfying novel reveal secrets that fans of the series will find even more rewarding than the revelation of Leduc's murderer. Readers finally learn why Three Pines appears on no map of the province of Québec. (It's not because of the village's size.) And the very last, immensely touching sentence explains why and how Gamache had "a great reckoning" with Amelia Choquet.
Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, eventually retired to the tiny, bucolic village of Three Pines, deep in the Québec countryside southeast of Montréal. The isolated hamlet has no cell-phone service and, as Louise Penny repeatedly reminds us in several of her novels, it doesn't even appear on any provincial maps.
But the thought of Gamache puttering around in the yard or spending untold hours hanging out with locals in the village bistro wouldn't make for much of a novel, at least in terms of suspense. So in this 12th installment of Penny's popular mystery series,, the famed (and former) cop finds himself in harness once again, this time as commander of the academy that trains incoming Sûreté agents.
In theory, it should be a cozy assignment, but of course that's not the case. The academy, it turns out, is the last bastion of the decay that previously plagued the entire Sûreté. Gamache is determined to set things right, by destroying the academy's brutal, authoritarian, fraud-plagued culture, which trained agents to view the public as an enemy to be subdued, rather than a citizenry to be protected.
Gamache's mission becomes all the more complex when Serge Leduc, a dishonest and malevolent professor who effectively ran the place under the previous regime, is found murdered in his rooms on campus. Leduc was shot in the head with his own gun, but the crime scene makes it clear that this was no suicide.
As is usually the case in a good mystery, potential suspects abound.
Did a cadet at the academy murder Leduc? Or a fellow professor, such as the lonely, broken Michel Brébeuf? Could the local mayor, who admits to having prayed for Leduc's death, have killed him? Perhaps Gamache himself pulled the trigger. The former homicide chief despised Leduc, and only kept him on as a faculty member to give Gamache time to collect evidence against Leduc and pave the way for his prosecution.
The murder investigation takes an odd turn, thanks to an old, mystifying map that had been hidden in a wall in the Three Pines bistro, only to be discovered during renovations. Shortly before Leduc is murdered, Gamache makes four copies of the map and gives them to four cadets, whom he assigns the task of deciphering who created the strangely symbolic map and why. Murder investigators later find one of those copies in Leduc's bedroom. It's the map that belonged to Amelia Choquet, a freshman cadet who quickly becomes a prime suspect.
Choquet is bright and conscientious, but a very atypical police recruit. The 19-year-old woman has a history of prostitution anf drug use. She has spiked hair, multiple piercings, myriad tattoos and an antisocial attitude. Leduc had rejected her application for admission before Gamache took over, but Gamache reversed that decision and admitted her, despite -- or perhaps because of -- a secret lurking in her family history. It is a crucially important secret, and one that is not revealed until the novel draws to a close.
A Great Reckoning is a murder mystery, of course, but it's more than that. In typical fashion, Penny, ever the master storyteller, fills her tale with myriad unanswered questions as she builds to a climax that solves every puzzle and transforms the seemingly tangential into an essential part of the storyline. In a clever bit of plotting, Penny reveals the motive for Leduc's murder some time before she finally discloses who killed him.
Fans of the Gamache novels will be pleased to see the return of Penny's cadre of regulars, with the wise, avuncular and erudite Gamache topping the list. The colorful denizens of Three Pines are back once again: partners Olivier and Gabri, who own the bistro and the bed and breakfast; Myrna, the city psychologist turned small-town bookseller; Clara, the noted artist. And, of course, Ruth, the brilliant but cranky old poet who lives with Rosa, a pet duck who always seems to be softly quacking "fuck, fuck, fuck" in her sleep.
The interplay among these close friends provides a fine counterpoint to the tension created by the investigation. We're reminded, for example, that Ruth has a habit of taking books and cups and all manner of things from her neighbors' homes, quietly and without permission. She believes in "precycling," which Penny describes as "an evolution of recycling" that allows Ruth to make use of things before people actually throw them out.
The final pages of this satisfying novel reveal secrets that fans of the series will find even more rewarding than the revelation of Leduc's murderer. Readers finally learn why Three Pines appears on no map of the province of Québec. (It's not because of the village's size.) And the very last, immensely touching sentence explains why and how Gamache had "a great reckoning" with Amelia Choquet.
