Review: "The Black Wolf" Louise Penny

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By Paul Carrier

Louise Penny’s Québec-based mystery series — 20 novels and counting — has always featured a recurring cast of characters led by Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police force in that Canadian province.

Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, live in the charming village of Three Pines, which has its share of quirky characters, including a famous but cranky poet and her pet duck, Rosa. The colorful locals return from one book to the next, but almost all of the novels have stand-alone plots involving investigations of all-new dastardly doings in Three Pines or elsewhere in Québec.

Now some of that has changed. The Black Wolf, released this year as the latest entry in the series, picks up where its immediate predecessor, The Gray Wolf, left off, providing an unusual example of plotting continuity from one novel to the next.

The Grey Wolf closed with the Sûreté thwarting a domestic terrorism plot to kill untold thousands by poisoning Montréal’s water supply. The Black Wolf opens with Ganache, who heads the homicide division of the Sûreté, fearing that the failed poisoning plot was only the first phase of a two-pronged assault, the second part of which has yet to materialize.

Penny weaves a suspenseful tale, initially with plenty of unanswered questions that leave Ganache — and the reader — struggling to figure out what’s going on.

Is Gamache right in assuming that the poisoning scheme was designed to deflect attention from an even more heinous act that may loom on the horizon? 

Why does a map prepared by Charles Langlois, a biologist who tipped off police to the original threat and was then murdered in a mob hit, show a doted line running from Québec into a town in Vermont that houses a commando training center?

How did Frederick Castonguay, a childhood friend of Langlois, end up buried in a shallow grave on the shore of a remote lake in northern Québec that Langlois had visited shortly before his death?

Why does Marcus Lauzon, the disgraced former deputy prime minister of Canada, who has been convicted and imprisoned as the mastermind behind the first terrorist attack, insist that he’s been framed? Lauzon claims the real culprit is someone even higher up in the government: James Woodford, the prime minister of Canada.

And what about Evelyn Tardiff? She’s the head of the unit within the Sûreté whose task is fighting organized crime, but she has been seen at an outdoor market in Montréal chatting with a crime boss. Is she a turncoat who’s working for the mob? Or has she deceived an overly trusting criminal to help her do her job in the Sûreté?

It soon becomes clear that Québec, and indeed Canada as a whole, face what may be an existential threat. The looming crisis sounds far-fetched, but also frighteningly plausible in light of recent real-world events.

Penny does a masterful job of keeping readers guessing as we try to differentiate between the good guys and the bad. I know I mistook white hats for black ones, and vice versa.

As the plot builds to a climax, Penny ratchets up the tension with quick scene changes, introducing and updating events that are underway simultaneously, or nearly so, in multiple locations. A page-turner like this makes a reader grateful for the security and camaraderie of Three Pines, even if the village is, after all, purely fictional.

Review: "The Grey Wolf," Louise Penny

By Paul Carrier

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, head of the homicide division of the provincial police force in Québec, has investigated his share of murders since author Louise Penny introduced him years ago in Still Life, the first of her 19 novels (to date) in the wildly  popular mystery series.

But in The Grey Wolf, the latest entry in the series, Gamache and his team may be facing a crisis far more catastrophic than solving individual slayings. A potential act of domestic terrorism may be in the works in Québec, and on a scale that could threaten the lives of thousands and create a panic that would trigger a collapse of the social order.

To make matters worse, Gamache suspects that one or more senior officers in the Sûreté du Québec, as the French-speaking province’s police department is known, may be in on the scheme. But he doesn’t know who they are or even if his fear of in-house collaborators is well-founded.

There are twists and turns aplenty as the case unfolds. In fact, the normally restrained and unflappable Gamache quickly loses his temper in the opening pages, swearing at a woman who calls him at home and setting an ominous tone for what is to come.

A biologist who may be able to help Gamache unmask the presumed conspirators is murdered while meeting with him in Montréal. Then his killer is murdered as well. Gamache wonders if those deaths are somehow linked to two seemingly unrelated murders in far-flung regions of Québec.

The top aide to the deputy prime minister of Canada quickly comes under suspicion for possible ties to a terrorist network. And a Catholic monk who may have valuable information for Gamache about the alleged conspiracy disappears from his remote monastery, destination unknown.

The investigation is sufficiently complex that Gamache dispatches his top lieutenants to Washington, Italy and France, all while trying to determine who, if anyone, high up in the Sûreté's chain of command may be complicit in plotting a crime that is almost too heinous to imagine. 

As the shocking climax draws near and time runs short, the plot jumps from one locale to another, heightening the tension on multiple fronts. Gamache and his senior agents are confused and terrified as they seek elusive answers and struggle to avert a disaster that would rock not only Québec but all of Canada.

Perry’s novels always feature a recurring cast of quirky characters who, like Gamache and his wife Reine-Marie, live in the small village of Three Pines, south of Montréal. It’s a rural town so remote that, as Penny notes in some of her novels, it doesn’t appear on any map.

The beloved locals turn up in The Grey Wolf as well, but bonhomie is in shorter supply than usual this time around. For one thing, this novel is not set in Three Pines, as some of Penny's earlier novels have been. And Québec proves to be a dark and dangerous place in The Grey Wolf. When doomsday looms, there is little time for croissants, café au lait and the good-natured banter of close friends.

Penny has announced that her 20th novel — entitled The Black Wolf — is in the offing, with a release date of Oct. 28, 2025. Does the title promise a link between the next entry and this one? The Grey Wolf’s closing lines suggest just such a connection. Time will tell.

Review: "The Deerfield Massacre," James L. Swanson

By Paul Carrier

In The Deerfield Massacre, James L. Swanson's wide-ranging examination of the 1704 French and Indian raid on Deerfield, Massachusetts, Swanson claims that the event once was "the most famous episode in early American history." Now, he writes, it has been forgotten.

Whether the devastating attack on the tiny settlement ever was better-known than anything else that happened in colonial America is debatable. But quibbling aside, there's no denying that what occurred in Deerfield in the predawn hours of the last day of February 1704 once held a much more prominent place in American memory than it does today.

The key facts are well-documented. Close to 50 French soldiers and militiamen from New France (Canada) and about 240 Indigenous warriors allied with the French invaded the palisaded village 100 miles west of Boston under cover of darkness. The attackers killed dozens of residents, burned several homes and seized more than 100 captives — men, women and children — who were forcibly marched 300 miles north, to New France. Some died or were murdered en route.

The Deerfield raid was one of many such attacks along the borderlands between New France and New England in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. In part, they were an extension of European conflicts between Britain and France. As Swanson points out, however, the Deerfield attackers had motives of their own, which transformed a seemingly random display of wanton violence into a carefully planned act of war.

For the French, the raid was “part of an offensive move designed to stop English expansion” into French territory, Swanson writes. The Indigenous participants had various motives. Warring against the English allowed tribes to enjoy French patronage. Moreover, natives who had been displaced from lands in the Deerfield area sought revenge against the English. And combatants from some tribes hoped to adopt captives as replacements for deceased tribal members. Captives also were “valuable commodities” to Native captors, who could use them as servants or slaves, sell them to the French, or ransom them to the English.

The raid quickly assumed a rarified spot in the annals of warfare along the early American frontier, largely because of the wildly popular “captivity narrative” written by John Williams. The Puritan minister of Deerfield, Williams was captured in the 1704 assault along with much of his family, but he later returned to New England, to great acclaim. Williams’ perspective was hostile toward Indigenous people, but even more vitriolic toward the Catholicism of the French and their allies.

Although many captives made their way home over time, others stayed behind in New France, as adopted members of Indigenous or French communities. Williams’ daughter Eunice married a Mohawk man in New France and refused to return to Deerfield, except for occasional visits after her father had died. (Eunice’s mother was killed during the march to New France.)

I had a working knowledge of the Deerfield raid before I read Swanson’s book because I have genealogical connections to it,  on both the French and Puritan sides. But The Deerfield Massacre is enlightening nonetheless. Swanson does not provide much new information about the raid itself, although he does place it in the context of earlier conflicts in the area. And he sheds a great deal of light on subsequent developments and evolving attitudes.

For example, The Deerfield Massacre pays considerable attention to the fate of the John Sheldon House, later known as the Old Indian House, which was built in Deerfield at the end of the 17th century. A large, imposing structure with a heavily reinforced front door, the house survived the 1704 raid intact. So did its door, built with double planks of lumber and studded with heavy nails. The door was scarred by tomahawk gouges and it has a gaping hole through which a gun was fired, killing one of the inhabitants.

By the 1840s, the then-owner of the house had decided to tear it down or sell it, prompting local activists to launch a botched fundraising campaign. The house was demolished in 1848, but the door, revered locally as what Swanson calls a “holy relic” dubbed the Indian House Door, was preserved.

Then local preservationists, still lamenting the loss of the house,  suffered another setback. In 1863, a newcomer to Deerfield somehow managed to quietly sell the Indian House Door to a Boston-area antiquarian. The door was on its way to its new home before agitated townspeople learned what had happened. It took years, but Deerfield eventually reclaimed its cherished artifact, only to court disaster by displaying it at a local hotel. The hotel caught fire in 1877, but local men rushed in and saved the door, which is now on display in a Deerfield museum. Seeing it firsthand is an electrifying experience.

Swanson goes on to discuss a 1910 movie filmed in Deerfield, historical pageants held there in the early years of the 20th century, the racist tropes of the “colonial revival” movement and the eventual development of Deerfield as a tourist destination, which it remains today. He notes that public and scholarly attitudes toward the raid have changed greatly over time, thanks to the late 19th-century recognition of the Canadian perspective on the raid and a newfound respect in the 21st-century for the Indigenous people who participated in it. Local museum references to “savages,” for example, are now a thing of the past.

 

Review: "The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright"

By Paul Carrier

Relatively few people, even here in New England, have ever heard of Esther Wheelwright, who was born in Wells, Massachusetts (present-day Maine) in 1696. Yet she lived a remarkable, almost unbelievable life until her death, at 84, in 1780. In fact, Wheelwright’s life was so unusual it might be said she had three lives rather than one, as scholar Ann M. Little explains in her 2016 book: The Many Captivities of Esther Wheelwright.

Born into a staunchly religious Puritan family, Wheelwright lived with her parents and siblings, as well as the family’s servants and slaves, for seven years until August 1703, when 39 Wells residents were killed or kidnapped during a French and Indian raid. The captives, including Wheelwright, were marched north to a Wabanaki village at Norridgewock, in what is now Maine. There, she was adopted by an Indigenous family and raised as a Catholic.

Wheelwright’s third life began to take form in 1708, when she moved still farther north, to Québec, where she lived briefly in the Chateau St. Louis, the governor’s palace. The following year, she was enrolled in a convent school run by the Ursuline nuns, eventually joining that teaching order. She rose to the position of mother superior of the Ursulines of Québec in 1760, after Québec fell to the British during the French and Indian War.

Little, a professor at Colorado State University, does a valiant job of detailing and analyzing Wheelwright’s life. But the task must have been daunting. As Little makes clear, the historical record is spotty.

No one knows, to cite one example, precisely where Wheelwright was when she was first taken captive in Wells in 1703. It’s assumed she was not in the family home at the time, because she was the only member of her immediate family to be seized by the raiding party.

Similarly, while Little makes it clear that much is known about how the Wabanaki of Norridgewock lived in that time period, and informed assumptions can be made about how Wheelwright was treated there, available records shed no light on precisely who adopted her in Norridgewock or how she reacted to the dramatic change in her circumstances. Wheelwright's relocation to Québec in 1708 leaves us with a whole new set of unanswerable questions. Why did she go there? Did she do so willingly?

The author blends exhaustive research with keen insight and a solid grasp of the available facts, but she cannot craft biographical details out of whole cloth, nor does she try to do so. Inevitably the reader learns almost as much about Wells, Norridgewock and Québec as about Wheelwright herself.

Still, that does not diminish Little’s accomplishment, which highlights the unusual prominence and power of the adult Wheelwright in the male-dominated world of the 18th century.

When the British conquered Québec in 1759, they converted sections of the Ursuline monastery into a military hospital and a barracks. The following year, the Ursulines elected Wheelwright, by then 64 years old, mother superior. She would serve three terms in the role, followed by two as the assistant superior.

Wheelwright led or helped lead the Ursulines during their most difficult years, which witnessed the military occupation that immediately followed the conquest of Québec and the uncertainty that plagued French Canadians until the British Parliament finally passed a law in 1774 declaring Catholicism legal in British-ruled Québec.

Little notes that Marie-Joseph de l'Enfant-Jésus, the name Wheelwright took as a nun, “was still considered a foreigner” and an “arrogant autocrat” by some Ursulines during her years at the helm. To her critics, she apparently remained a New England-born Wabanaki adoptee, despite her many years as a French-speaking Ursuline. Yet when her third term as mother superior ended in 1772, Little writes, the monastery had “more students, more novices, and more money” than the nuns could have hoped for “in the dark hours of 1759 and 1760.” 

Wheelwright’s personal story, which made her “remarkable in her lifetime,” probably is responsible for dooming her to obscurity in our time, Little writes. She is “too English or American” for French Canadians, and “too foreign and too Catholic” for Americans. She remains, to this day, the only foreign-born mother superior of the Ursulines in Québec.

Review: "Original Death," Eliot Pattison

By Paul Carrier

Author Eliot Pattison first introduced readers to exiled Scottish clan chief Duncan McCallum in 2007, when Pattison launched a series of historical mysteries set in pre-revolutionary America. The collection opens with Bone Rattler, the novel from which the series takes its name.

The set currently includes seven novels, the third of which — Original Death — finds McCallum, a onetime Edinburgh medical student, in New York as the French and Indian War nears its end. It is the summer of 1760. In New France, Québec City has fallen to the British, but Montréal remains under French control as the British gear up to assault it.

Initially, McCallum is accompanying his elderly friend Conawago, a Nipmuc Indian, on what is supposed to be a joyous, long-overdue meeting between Conawago and two other surviving members of his decimated tribe.

But things go terribly wrong very quickly. Arriving at their destination, a tiny settlement of Christian Indians, McCallum and Conawago discover that many of the residents, including Conawago’s nephew Towantha, have been slaughtered and several children have been kidnapped. Towantha’s grandson, Ishmael, and Conawago quickly flee the scene, but in opposite directions.

Did French raiders from Canada kill the victims and make off with the children? Indians allied with the French? A messianic Native trying to launch an Indigenous revolution? British rangers falsely accuse McCallum of the murders, but he escapes with the help of a Mohawk Indian. Forced to choose between pursuing his northbound friend or racing south, toward Albany, to rescue Ishmael, McCallum sets out in search of the boy.

Many (make that very many) adventures — and misadventures — ensue in this evocative tale, which features period details and a fascinating protagonist who is fiercely proud of his Scottish roots yet emotionally tied to the Indigenous peoples of America, whose ways he has come to appreciate. McCallum has several priorities. He must try to find and unite Ishmael and Conawago, identify the murderers, rescue the missing children and, of course, save his own skin.

Pattison portrays his Indian characters and their culture with care. Some scenes, in particular, are especially memorable, such as a tense meeting of the Grand Council of the Haudenosaunee (the Iroquois League) during a time of  great turmoil and uncertainty.

Original Death emphasizes the multiplicity of Eastern Woodland tribes in British and French territories during the 18th century — Iroquois, Abenaki, Huron, Nipmuc, etc. — and the complexity of their relationships, both among themselves and with people of European origin.

The tribal people in Original Death have profound but confounding beliefs. The mysticism that permeates the novel, in which Natives often talk of “oracles,” the “old gods,” “spirits” and traveling to and from “the other side,” may strike some readers as fanciful. Yet others will appreciate what Pattison calls, in an author's note, “the deep capacity for spirituality” within the tribes that figure so prominently in the novel.

Pattison clearly recognizes the years preceding the American Revolution as a formative period in the development of the American character. The Bone Rattler series underscores the fact that many players — not just people of English ancestry — walked that stage. “The early colonies were in many ways founded and populated by a dazzling range of what we would call identities today,” Pattison said in an interview with the Journal of the American Revolution.

A word of warning: Original Death is not a novel for the faint of heart. It is a sometimes brutal tale set in an often vicious time and place. As Kirkus Reviews noted in its review, Original Death “is often somber and unblinking in its portrayal of a dark period in history.” But the violence is not gratuitous, and if readers come prepared they should not be taken aback.

An attorney, Pattison is a prolific author with varied interests. In addition to the Bone Rattler series, he has written the Inspector Shan mysteries, which are set in Tibet, as well as several nonfiction books on legal and business topics.

Review: "A World of Curiosities," Louise Penny

By Paul Carrier

 

Having written 18 novels in her Québec-based mystery series starring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, Louise Penny has consistently shown herself to be a master of characterization and evocative writing. But in A World of Curiosities, the latest entry in the series, Penny has concocted an intricate plot that is so elaborate and fast-paced it may pack even more narrative punch than any of her previous novels.

As fans know, Gamache has held various high-level jobs in the Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police force of that Canadian province, including his current position as head of the Sûreté’s homicide division.

He’s a busy man indeed in A World of Curiosities. Too busy, in fact, for a thorough summary of the novel’s story line in this space.

Suffice it to say that the plot explores the murder of a drug-addicted prostitute; the potentially malevolent intent of one or both of the victim’s children as they grow into adulthood; a mass shooting at an engineering school in Montréal; the discovery of a sealed room above a bookstore in the quaint (and fictional) Québec town of Three Pines, where Gamache lives; a mysterious painting that suggests someone — perhaps Gamache and his family? — may be in grave danger; and the murder of an elderly woman whose death is initially misclassified as a suicide.

And then things get really interesting.

As shocking plot twists multiply at a rapid clip, Gamache’s team races to prevent a catastrophe. A mounting sense of impending doom settles over the proceedings in this stylishly unnerving but rewarding novel.

Review: "The Madness of Crowds," Louise Penny

By Paul Carrier

Almost all of Louise Penny’s wildly popular Armand Gamache mysteries are set in Québec. In The Madness of Crowds, the 17th and most recent entry in the series, the top homicide investigator for Québec’s provincial police force is back on his home turf in the tiny village of Three Pines, Québec, following a sojourn in Paris in 2020’s All the Devils Are Here.

As the new novel opens, Québec has emerged from a pandemic that has many wondering whether the crippled economy can sustain the high cost of the province’s safety net. Enter Abigail Robinson, a statistician who is winning legions of fans for her proposed solution: cut costs by mandating the abortion of imperfect fetuses and forcing the elderly and the terminally ill to be euthanized.

When Robinson’s assistant is murdered during the duo’s visit to Québec, Gamache and his team learn that there may be a link between that crime and tumultuous events in Robinson's family, including the killing of her disabled sister.

Penny’s trademark mix of psychological insight, humor, intriguing characters and  a charming setting are on full display here.

Review: "All the Devils Are Here," Louise Penny

By Paul Carrier

Louise Penny’s 16th mystery featuring Armand Gamache, head of the homicide division in Québec’s provincial police force, finds Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, living in Paris temporarily as they visit their two children and their families, who have relocated there.

All the Devils Are Here is the first of Penny’s novels to be set outside Québec. But, as always, Gamache's legendary investigative skills quickly come into play when Gamache's godfather, Stephen Horowitz, is run down while crossing a Paris street and a man is murdered in Horowitz’s apartment.

How are the two crimes related? And are they connected to the mysterious death of a journalist in Patagonia, the reopening of an abandoned mine and the dubious engineering practices of a massive French corporation with a global reach?

Review: "A Better Man," Louise Penny

By Paul Carrier

Since Canadian author Louise Penny launched her mystery series back in 2006, protagonist Armand Gamache has survived a roller coaster of career changes within the Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police force in that predominantly French-speaking province.

Gamache, a thoughtful and morally upright figure, has weathered many political storms while bouncing around within the Sûreté: chief inspector in the homicide division, head of the training academy, even chief superintendent for a time. That last job placed him in command of the entire force.

In A Better Man, the newly published 15th entry in the series, Gamache is coming off a suspension and is about to be demoted to his old job as chief inspector of homicide, thanks to the controversial techniques he used to dismantle a drug ring. The powers that be in Québec politics had hoped the downgrade would be so humiliating that Gamache would resign, but he’s too self-assured, and too devoted to the Sûreté, to ride off into the sunset.

While he waits to reclaim his old job — Gamache's son-in-law will soon step down as the chief of homicide and move to France with his pregnant wife and their son — catastrophic spring flooding drenches the province, which is placed under a state of emergency. Temporarily at loose ends in his career, Gamache finds himself investigating the disappearance of a pregnant woman, Vivienne Godin.

Godin’s husband, Carl Tracey, a mean-spirited and abusive potter, insists Godin is a lush and an unfaithful wife who wandered off to points unknown, probably to hook up with a lover. But Godin’s father, a widower devoted to his only child, tells the police she was bound for his house when she vanished. Homer Godin says he is convinced that his daughter has been murdered . . . by Tracey.

Soon enough, Vivienne Godin’s bruised body turns up in a flood-swollen river. She, and her unborn child, died after Godin fell or was pushed into the frigid, raging waters. As Gamache and his agents gather evidence against the likely killer, a harrowing fear consumes them: what if they cannot prepare a case strong enough to win a conviction in court? What if the murderer goes free?

All of the elements that have made Penny a bestselling author are on display in A Better Man, a page turner that is well-plotted and graced with Penny’s signature blend of psychological insight and endearing characters. Godin’s body is found near the isolated village of Three Pines in Québec's Eastern Townships, where the bilingual Gamache lives with his wife, Reine Marie, and their two dogs. The colorful and quirky locals familiar to readers of the earlier novels in the series, including acerbic poet Ruth Zardo and her ever-present pet duck Rosa, are on hand once again.
 
Initially, A Better Man appears to be less of a whodunit than a police procedural, because once the presumed killer is identified early on, the focus shifts as investigators build their case.

But readers expect more from the likes of Penny, and she delivers with masterful plot twists. One alternative suspect emerges as the investigation continues. Then still more possible killers materialize, before the truth is revealed in the final pages.

Penny’s novels are mysteries, of course, but they focus on far more than the crimes that propel the plots. At heart, Gamache and almost all of the other recurring characters from Three Pines embody the belief that goodness, decency and integrity are core human values which triumph over time, despite sometimes daunting odds.

Each of the Gamache novels can be read independently because Penny always weaves in just enough history to bring readers up to speed about the backstory. But because so much has happened to the characters over the course of the previous 14 novels, it’s probably best for newcomers to start with Still Life, Penny’s debut.

Review: "Kingdom of the Blind," Louise Penny

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.

Review: "Glass Houses," Louise Penny

By Paul Carrier

Armand Gamache — well-educated, principled, and a highly skilled detective — has gone through several professional incarnations in Louise Penny’s 12 previous novels. Top homicide cop. Early (but short-lived) retiree. Superintendent of the Sûreté du Québec’s training academy.

Now, in Penny’s 13th outing, Gamache has reached the pinnacle of his career, as chief superintendent of the Sûreté. That places him in command of the entire provincial police force in predominantly French-speaking Québec, a geographically massive Canadian province of eight million people.

Having ferreted out corruption within the Sûreté and survived ruthless attempts to destroy him, Gamache has decided he must gamble everything on reinventing the agency. His goal is to make it strong enough to fight a rising wave of crime by demolishing the province’s premier drug cartel, in the belief that most crime has its roots in drug abuse.

But as Gamache and his team prepare to deliver a death blow to Québec’s biggest drug lord, a painful decision arises during a trial. As a witness, Gamache must choose between testifying truthfully, which would destroy the Sûreté’s one shot at neutralizing the narcotics kingpin, or lying under oath to avoid tipping off the trafficker to the looming crackdown.

If readers have learned anything about Armand Gamache from Penny’s novels it’s that he plays everything by the book. So the possibility that he will perjure himself, or allow a large drug shipment to cross from Québec into the United States to lure the cartel into believing the Sûreté is incompetent, is a stunning turn of events.

As Gamache says at one point, quoting Mahatma Gandhi: "There is a higher court than the courts of justice and that is the court of conscience.”

Conscience figures prominently in Glass Houses, which focuses in part on a murder that occurs in the tiny (and fictional) village of Three Pines, south of Montréal. That is where Ganache and his wife, Reine-Marie, live, and it is where a visitor to the village is killed, shortly after a cobrador appears on the village green.

A what? 

The cobrador is a real-life, costumed debt collector who stalks deadbeats in contemporary Spain, to shame them into paying their bills. But the cloaked, hooded, masked cobrador who turns up in Three Pines harkens back to medieval times. (Today's Spanish cobrador is real, but Penny admits to having created the older version.) As portrayed in the novel, the earlier cobradors collected moral debts rather than financial ones. The ancient cobrador acted as a conscience, holding people accountable for grave moral infractions for which they have not atoned. That seems to be what is happening in Three Pines. But who is the cobrador?  And who is the target?

When the cobrador eventually disappears, Katie Evans, an architect from Montréal, is found murdered in a church basement. Evans is dressed as the mysterious “conscience,” so was she the cobrador? Perhaps the cobrador is still at large, having murdered Evans. But if Evans was not the cobrador, why is she found wearing the cobrador’s costume? Is it possible that the cobrador, too, has been killed but its body has yet to be found? Maybe someone else, a third party, is responsible for not one but two murders.

Penny weaves her way through all of this with great finesse. Even after a suspect has been placed on trial, the reader does not immediately learn the defendant's identity, as the novel slips back and forth in time between the killing and the subsequent trial. Nor is it immediately clear how the trial and the Sûreté’s plan to destroy Québec’s most powerful trafficker are linked, adding to the suspense as a showdown looms between cops and cartel.

The author is a gifted storyteller, not least because she leavens her narrative with a hallmark of this series: the levity and wit of a recurring cast of characters from Three Pines. The ensemble includes the wise but acerbic poet Ruth, who makes her rounds carrying a pet duck named Rosa; famed artist Clara; therapist turned bookstore owner Myrna; and Gabri and Olivier, the gay couple who run the local bistro and the village’s bed and breakfast.

The Gamache novels, by no means devoid of evil, are best-known for Penny’s emphasis on decency, friendship and psychological insight, all of it delivered in her trademark lyrical style. Glass Houses, with its intricate plot, continues that tradition, and ends with a cliff-hanger that practically screams “sequel.” Which is a very good thing indeed.