By Paul Carrier
After all the mayhem, police corruption and bureaucratic backstabbing Armand Gamache has survived in the last 13 installments of Louise Penny’s mystery series, it’s a wonder her protagonist remains the calm, dignified presence he has been since Still Life, Penny’s first novel, hit the shelves back in 2005.
But Gamache, a bilingual francophone born and raised in Québec but educated at Oxford, finds his sangfroid sorely tested in Kingdom of the Blind, thanks to multiple crises large and small.
Formerly the chief of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec, that Canadian province’s equivalent of a state police force in the United States, Gamache now runs the agency as its chief superintendent. Except for a not-so-minor problem. He has been suspended and remains under investigation for his handling of an operation that destroyed a massive drug cartel, a focal point of Penny’s 2017 novel, Glass Houses.
In the course of that case, Gamache allowed a large cache of opioids to enter Canada, because he decided that was the price he had to pay to shatter the syndicate, which he viewed as an even bigger threat. The police later retrieved most of the drugs. But now, as an internal investigation of Gamache drags on, he is desperately trying to find what’s left out there, before the deadly narcotics hit the streets of inner-city Montréal.
Penny tends to combine such big-picture themes with mysteries involving an unexplained death or two. The novels in the series often unite Gamache with friends and acquaintances from Three Pines, the isolated village in Québec where he and his wife, Reine-Marie, make their home. Such is the case here. The usual collection of likable oddballs is on hand, including famed poet Ruth Zardo and her pet duck Rosa, who always seems to be quacking “fuck, fuck, fuck.”
In this installment, Gamache, Three Pines bookstore owner Myrna Landers, and young Montréal builder Benedict Pouliot find themselves drawn together following the death of Bertha Baumgartner, an elderly woman who worked as a house cleaner in Three Pines and its environs. Despite her humble social standing, Baumgartner claimed to be a baroness.
Gamache, Landers and Pouliot never met Baumgartner, yet she named them as executors of her estate. Not only do they have no idea why they were assigned this task, but they discover that Baumgartner’s will includes seemingly improbable claims that she was a multimillionaire with valuable properties in Europe.
What first looks like nothing more than a bizarre puzzle is transformed into a criminal case when a beneficiary of Baumgartner's will is found murdered in the collapsed remains of the late woman's house.
As with all of her previous novels, Kingdom of the Blind requires the reader to think ahead . . . to decide early on what book to pick up next. That’s because Perry’s pacing will keep you transfixed and feverishly turning page after page, long after you had planned to run errands or fix supper.
The result is a quick read that is both satisfying and frustrating. Satisfying because of Penny’s psychological depth and polished plotting; frustrating because the reading experience is over all too soon.
Penny is adept at misdirection, encouraging readers to assume that one character or another is the culprit without revealing, until the final pages, who the killer is. In a novel with so many moving parts — the murder, Gamache’s professional fall from grace, the imminent release of the missing opioid stockpile, the fate of a cadet dismissed from the police academy for dealing drugs -- Penny has loose ends aplenty to tie up by novels's end. She does so with her usual skill.
What makes Kingdom of the Blind all the more satisfying is that it’s a bit grittier than its predecessors. Additionally, key characters find their lives heading in new directions following the emotion-filled climax. There’s no gratuitous violence here, but this time out, Penny pairs the predictable coziness of the novel — Gamache’s social circle always has adored sampling comfort food beside a Three Pines fireplace — with a dark, big-city realism.
But Gamache, a bilingual francophone born and raised in Québec but educated at Oxford, finds his sangfroid sorely tested in Kingdom of the Blind, thanks to multiple crises large and small.
Formerly the chief of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec, that Canadian province’s equivalent of a state police force in the United States, Gamache now runs the agency as its chief superintendent. Except for a not-so-minor problem. He has been suspended and remains under investigation for his handling of an operation that destroyed a massive drug cartel, a focal point of Penny’s 2017 novel, Glass Houses.
In the course of that case, Gamache allowed a large cache of opioids to enter Canada, because he decided that was the price he had to pay to shatter the syndicate, which he viewed as an even bigger threat. The police later retrieved most of the drugs. But now, as an internal investigation of Gamache drags on, he is desperately trying to find what’s left out there, before the deadly narcotics hit the streets of inner-city Montréal.
Penny tends to combine such big-picture themes with mysteries involving an unexplained death or two. The novels in the series often unite Gamache with friends and acquaintances from Three Pines, the isolated village in Québec where he and his wife, Reine-Marie, make their home. Such is the case here. The usual collection of likable oddballs is on hand, including famed poet Ruth Zardo and her pet duck Rosa, who always seems to be quacking “fuck, fuck, fuck.”
In this installment, Gamache, Three Pines bookstore owner Myrna Landers, and young Montréal builder Benedict Pouliot find themselves drawn together following the death of Bertha Baumgartner, an elderly woman who worked as a house cleaner in Three Pines and its environs. Despite her humble social standing, Baumgartner claimed to be a baroness.
Gamache, Landers and Pouliot never met Baumgartner, yet she named them as executors of her estate. Not only do they have no idea why they were assigned this task, but they discover that Baumgartner’s will includes seemingly improbable claims that she was a multimillionaire with valuable properties in Europe.
What first looks like nothing more than a bizarre puzzle is transformed into a criminal case when a beneficiary of Baumgartner's will is found murdered in the collapsed remains of the late woman's house.
As with all of her previous novels, Kingdom of the Blind requires the reader to think ahead . . . to decide early on what book to pick up next. That’s because Perry’s pacing will keep you transfixed and feverishly turning page after page, long after you had planned to run errands or fix supper.
The result is a quick read that is both satisfying and frustrating. Satisfying because of Penny’s psychological depth and polished plotting; frustrating because the reading experience is over all too soon.
Penny is adept at misdirection, encouraging readers to assume that one character or another is the culprit without revealing, until the final pages, who the killer is. In a novel with so many moving parts — the murder, Gamache’s professional fall from grace, the imminent release of the missing opioid stockpile, the fate of a cadet dismissed from the police academy for dealing drugs -- Penny has loose ends aplenty to tie up by novels's end. She does so with her usual skill.
What makes Kingdom of the Blind all the more satisfying is that it’s a bit grittier than its predecessors. Additionally, key characters find their lives heading in new directions following the emotion-filled climax. There’s no gratuitous violence here, but this time out, Penny pairs the predictable coziness of the novel — Gamache’s social circle always has adored sampling comfort food beside a Three Pines fireplace — with a dark, big-city realism.
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