A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny- Amazing Read!!!!

When Armand Gamache accepts the position as the new head of the training academy for the Sûreté du Québec , he has to decide who will be accepted into the new class of cadets. He agonizes over one applicant that the prior head had denied. This tattooed, pierced, and surly young lady has a connection to Gamache that she is unaware of.

While in Three Pines, Gamache becomes aware of an old map found in the walls of Gabi and Olivier‘s building that shows topographical information but also has symbols like a pyramid, a cow, and three pine trees.  The map is an oddity because Three Pines is not found on any other paper maps or even with a GPS.  So why was this map made?

At the academy, Gamache fires several teachers, keeps one who is definitely his enemy, and hires the man who betrayed him and all of his officers while in charge of the Sûreté. At the same time, he gives four cadets copies of the map and asks them to investigate it and discover the secrets behind it. One of the cadets is Amelia Choquet, the cadet that Gamache was conflicted about.

What I really enjoyed about this book is the way it addresses one of the loose ends from the big blow up in the Sûreté  in previous books.  The cadet Academy is the last piece of a nasty puzzle that had pieces all over the service and was poisoning it from the inside. By rooting out the poison at the beginning of all of the officer’s careers, Gamache is making a change in the entire force while finally rooting out the last of the bad eggs. When one of the bad eggs is murdered, Gamache has to work even harder to clean up the other baddies while solving the murder.

I also enjoyed the intertwining of the Three Pines map with the Academy goings on.  Introducing the new cadets but pairing them with older characters makes for an interesting blend of old and new. As always the quirky villagers add a touch of humor to a serious mystery but they are also part of a sad history that unfolds as the map’s origin gets uncovered.

Ms. Penny’s books are just so wonderful to read. I found myself reading this one until 2:30AM on a work night because I just could not stop reading it! There are so many little twists and turns but also familiar characters to revisit and new ones to wonder about.  This book is a wonderful mix of mystery, police procedural, and a down home with the family kind of vibe. 

The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny

No outsiders are ever admitted to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, hidden deep in the wilderness of Quebec, where two dozen cloistered monks live in peace and prayer. They grow vegetables, they tend chickens, they make chocolate. And they sing. Ironically, for a community that has taken a vow of silence, the monks have become world-famous for their glorious voices, raised in ancient chants whose effect on both singer and listener is so profound it is known as “the beautiful mystery.”

But when the renowned choir director is murdered, the lock on the monastery’s massive wooden door is drawn back to admit Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the Sûreté du Québec. There they discover disquiet beneath the silence, discord in the apparent harmony. One of the brothers, in this life of prayer and contemplation, has been contemplating murder. As the peace of the monastery crumbles, Gamache is forced to confront some of his own demons, as well as those roaming the remote corridors. Before finding the killer, before restoring peace, the Chief must first consider the divine, the human, and the cracks in between.  ( synopis from www.louisepenny.com)

Publication date 8/28/12  Hardcover, Minotaur, 373 pages

If I could rate this book 10 stars I would. When I finished the last page, all I could think was that I can’t wait for another year to see what happens with the story.  When I first started reading the book and realized that it all takes place in a monastery with no Three Pines interaction, I wondered how the emotional pull in all of Ms. Penny’s books, would happen in this book.  No worries on that score!

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his second in command Jean-Guy Beauvior have been sent to the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups to investigate the murder of one of the monks.  The monastery is a closed one and the monks follow the vow of silence.  Hundreds of years before the monks fled France and the Inquisition and had supposedly disappeared as an order.  Two years prior to the murder, the monks had released a recording of them singing Gregorian chants and “blown their cover”.  No-one is allowed into the monastery and the resultant fame from the recording has caused dissention among the monks.  Gamache and Beauvior have to work through the stories of the men living in a closed environment and find the truth about the murder.  The isolation of the location and the certainty that the murderer is one of the monks adds to the eeriness of the situation.

The recurring theme of the book seems to me to be that the men who have come to live there regard it as their own slice of Eden.  They live for love of their God and the music.  They lead simple but fulfilled lives and the music recording meant to raise money for repairs and to maintain their way of life has actually introduced the serpent in the garden.  Gamache and Beauvior find a group living in harmony with a common bond but they  also find the cracks and need to find out what was the issue that led one of the monks to kill.  There is also an overlapping theme about the nature of the chants and the history of written music as it relates to Gregorian chants that is quite interesting.

Gamache and Beauvior have put the trauma of two years before behind them and are seemingly in a good place. Beauvior has become free of his addiction to pain killers and is secretly dating Gamache’s daughter Annie.  He is happy with his life. Gamache still carries the physical and emotional scars from that time as well  but he has made a sort of peace with it.  The two men are forced to re-evaluate their feelings when their own personal serpent arrives at the monastery and begins to spread his poison.  The ending of the book is heart wrenching and will leave the reader hungry for the next installment in the series.  Ms. Penny does a wonderful job of putting the reader into the minds of the characters so that their hurts become our hurts and we really care about what happens next. 

This series just gets better and better!

“Hearts are broken,” Lillian Dyson carefully underlined in a book. “Sweet relationships are dead.”
But now Lillian herself is dead. Found among the bleeding hearts and lilacs of Clara Morrow's garden in Three Pines, shattering the celebrations of Clara's solo show at the famed Musée in Montreal. Chief Inspector Gamache, the head of homicide at the Sûreté du Québec, is called to the tiny Quebec village and there he finds the art world gathered, and with it a world of shading and nuance, a world of shadow and light.  Where nothing is as it seems.  Behind every smile there lurks a sneer. Inside every sweet relationship there hides a broken heart.  And even when facts are slowly exposed, it is no longer clear to Gamache and his team if what they've found is the truth, or simply a trick of the light. ( Overview from B&N.com)

I had the pleasure of seeing Ms. Penney at author talk recently, and she is just as wonderful to listen to as her books are to read. Her latest book is the seventh in a series set in Canada, primarily in Quebec and the fictional town of Three Pines.

One of the best things about her books is the extraordinary character development. The murder is always central to the plot but the interactions of the people involved in the situation are just as important. In this book, the people of Three Pines are like old friends involved in a messy situation. The murder rips open the scabs on relationships that have been damaged.  Some will re-heal and some appear to be beyond repair.  Ms. Penny gives just enough back story that first time readers will have an enjoyable read, but the long time reader will get the subtle nuances of the book.

Clara and Peter have always had a complicated relationship and I have always had a lot of antipathy towards Peter’s character. In this book, he is his usual jealous self but we see some of the history behind that and I felt some sympathy for him. Poor Clara finally has her own art show and then the body of her childhood “frenemy” turns up in her garden and takes all of the sparkle out of the occasion. Ruth, the town’s crusty poet, is her usual nasty self but in an almost loveable way in some instances. Chief Inspector Gamache and his second in command Jean-Guy Beauvior have made it through a terrible shared experience with their relationship intact. Or have they?

Every new book in this series is a treasure. This book continues in that manner. As a reader, I could not put the book down and when it was done, I was ready for the next one. Being obsessive about reading books in a series in order, I would recommend reading the earlier books, starting with Still Life. However, if that is not possible, a new reader would still find this a great book to read.

RPL Notes: This book is available in the Adult New fiction section.  We will also have the audio version in the near future.  All of the earlier books in the series can be found in Adult Mysteries,

Louise Penny- Great Author-Wonderful Mystery Series

Having worked at the circulation desk in my library for 5 years, I have gotten used to chatting with patrons about books I have enjoyed. It is always a thrill for me when someone comes in and says to me " I read...... and really loved it".  Now that I have moved up the chain and have a "desk job", I don't get to chat as much with patrons but I still make recommendations when I can.  This blog started for that reason. One of my favorite writers is Louise Penny, author of the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache Mysteries. She is also a favorite of many of my coworkers.

The series takes place for the most part, in a small town in the province of Quebec, Canada. Inspector Gamache works for the Surete du Quebec. He is an avid student of human behavior and appreciates the nuances of the small town. The books are full of information about Canadian life and the characters are perfectly written. We all anticipate each new book with baited breath in the library and fight over them when they come in.

I am a big audiobook fan and started listening to them as well as reading them. The reader, Ralph Cosham, is AMAZING. One of the more recent books was so well done that when I got to the end( sitting in my car in the library parking lot during lunch), I started to cry because the ending was so emotional. Mr. Cosham has a marvelous speaking voice and is both calming and scary at different times.

So..... if you want something new to read, I recommend that you get to your library or go to the bookstore and buy the first book in the series- Still Life. You will be hooked, I guarantee.

You can thank me later.....

Books in the series
1. Still Life
2. Fatal Grace/ Dead Cold in Canada
3. The Cruelest Month
4. A Rule Against Murder/ The Murder Stone
5. The Brutal Telling
6. Bury your Dead
7. A Trick of the Light ( Pub date 8-30-2011)