A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny
I think I picked up the wrong book. I’ve been recommended Louise Penny as being in the Tana French vein (write faster, French!), and I just sort of assumed that like the Dublin Murder Squad books that you could pick any one up and jump in. This wasn’t a bad book, but it felt a little like starting a TV show in the seventh season. Maybe I’m wrong, but I got the impression that I was supposed to know all of the characters and histories […]
Glass Houses (Inspector Gamache #13) by Louise Penny
There is, at least for me, somewhat of a struggle on deciding how to review a book deep into a series. Glass Houses is Louise Penny’s thirteenth Inspector Gamache book, and as she publishes a new one each year the sixteenth in the series will publish in September. There is so much backstory that feeds each new novel that I can’t rightly tell you to read this one if you haven’t read its predecessors, but I can emphatically tell you that if you like murder […]
How the Light Gets In (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #9) by Louise Penny
This is the closest I have ever been to giving one of these books five stars. I think I might have even done it if I’d been able to read the book faster, but since I was stuck with audio CD’s from my library, which I could only listen to in my car, my time with the story stretched out and I was able to think about it more rationally than I would have if were sitting on my couch frantically turning pages to find […]
The Beautiful Mystery (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #8) by Louise Penny
This was an odd one for sure, but I liked it. And kind of hated it. This is the second of the books to take place mostly absent from Three Pines, this time in a cloistered monastery, that until the murder, had a secret location known only to a few. The monks at Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups belong to a sect formerly believed lost or gone, and their vocation is music. They have recently become world-renowned (and paid for much needed repairs to the abbey) due to a […]
A Better Man by Louise Penny
Seriously though, there are enough Cannonballers who are on the Inspector Gamache train, that this should just be required reading. Amirite? [Review is semi-spoilery, depending on where you are in the series] Due to his questionable (yet, effective) methods of cracking a drug ring in the last book, Inspector Gamache found himself stripped of his title as head of the Quebec police department. This book sees him accepting a demotion and returning to his previous role as head of homicide. It’s a decision that is […]
A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny
After reading The Long Way Home last year and The Nature of the Beast earlier this year I still wasn’t sure what Louise Penny had remaining up her sleeve for the residents of Three Pines and the remaining members of the Sûreté, but I knew not to worry about it anymore. While those books were heading towards a new direction, this book finally takes sure steps into the new reality these characters are facing. The Nature of the Beast accepted the new status quo, this […]
