Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Ultimately Comforting and Hopeful

All the Devils are Here by Louise Penny

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This is the 16th Inspector Gamache mystery, and I’m honestly impressed with how consistent these books are. There’s been a couple that I didn’t care for much or had trouble getting into, but on the whole these books always work for me. All the Devils are Here was no different–in fact, I think it was one of my favorites thus far. Armand Gamache, his wife Reine-Marie, and his godfather Stephen are in Paris visiting Armand and Reine-Marie’s children and their families–including Jean-Guy Beauvoir, Armand’s former second in […]

A thriller in Paris.

All the Devils Are Here (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #16) by Louise Penny

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This was a major improvement on the last few books. It feels like Penny is getting her groove back. This book featured an implausibly large conspiracy, and I didn’t even think to complain about it once! The whole book takes place in Paris. Gamache and Reine-Marie are in Paris because Annie and Beauvoir’s baby is coming, and they want to be there for the birth (they moved to Paris last book, if you recall). The Gamache’s other son Daniel, who I dislike, also lives in […]

The only thing wrong with small towns are the people who live there.

Glass Houses by Louise Penny

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Dare I hope that I will continue enjoying the later Gamache books much more than the early ones? This series has really been touch and go for me since the beginning, but I’ve enjoyed most of the later ones quite a bit. Glass Houses was no exception, even with a plot that’s ludicrous even by Louise Penny standards (in addition to the weapons of mass destruction from a few books ago, the town of Three Pines is now also [SPOILER] the #1 location on the Canadian/U.S. border […]

Brutal Indeed

The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny

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Read as part of CBR13Bingo: Book club. I’m part of a mystery readers book club that goes through the Gamache series.  Whoo is the title accurate. Throughout the book, I had a sense of where it was going to go because I’ve read enough of this series and I’m aware of why it is so popular (handsome guy who everyone wishes was their dad blows into charming, rustic village to solve the case) to take the liberty of assumption as I pour through it. But I […]

I liked this one

A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny

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Series: The Inspector Gamache books. I read and reviewed Book 1 in 2016 and since then have read a couple a year. I read Book 11 in August of 2020 and didn’t really like it. I’ve been really back and forth on these books–I’ve loved some and barely been able to finish others. What I remembered most about this series prior to reading this book: I remember very few of the mysteries and even less of the b-plots–the ones that revolved around the corruption within […]

“She was beginning to see how quickly something completely normal could suddenly seem sinister, if you chose to see it that way.”

A Better Man by Louise Penny

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It has long been my habit to try to read each Inspector Gamache book in the month or season it is set, and by happy coincidence A Better Man, the fifteenth book in the series, is set in April. Delayed spring, occasional flooding, and a final snowstorm are all hallmarks of April in my neck of the woods, so I felt right at home with Gamache and the residents of Three Pines. Structurally we are with Gamache and company for one single case, with stunningly […]



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