Gamache’s excruciating grief over a wrong decision, Beauvoir’s softening toward the unconventional, a plot twist so...
The sixth appearance of Armand Gamache, North America’s most humane detective.
Chief Inspector Gamache of the Canadian Sûreté and his associate Jean Guy Beauvoir are slowly healing from a case that turned horribly bad. Gamache spends hours reading in Québec’s Literary and Historical Society library. Beauvoir, at Gamache’s instigation, reopens the Three Pines murder enquiry that sent B&B owner Olivier to prison. While Beauvoir quietly interrogates the gently eccentric residents of Three Pines (The Brutal Telling, 2009, etc.) to see whether anyone else had motive to kill a hermit for his antique treasures, happenstance lands Gamache in the middle of another murder case. Augustin Renaud, obsessed with finding the burial place of idolized Québec city founder Samuel de Champlain, lies dead in the library’s basement. The riddles of who killed him and why force Gamache and his aging mentor Emile to examine 400 years of Québec history. As they delve for clues among the library’s old journals and diaries, they focus ever more closely on the endless rancor between the French and the English.
Gamache’s excruciating grief over a wrong decision, Beauvoir’s softening toward the unconventional, a plot twist so unexpected it’s chilling, and a description of Québec intriguing enough to make you book your next vacation there, all add up to a superior read. Bring on the awards.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-37704-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
BOOK TO SCREEN
Although she ties up false leads a little too quickly, Hannah’s sixth—even without the 14 recipes—would be her tastiest yet.
Trouble brews along with decaf when the poisonous Quinn sisters open a bakery across the street from The Cookie Jar.
At first, Hannah Swenson (Sugar Cookie Murder, 2004, etc.) can’t believe her once-loyal customers are streaming through the front door of the Magnolia Blossom Bakery. Operated by seductive Shawna Lee Quinn and bankrolled by her rich-bitch sister Vanessa, who inherited piles of cash when her octogenarian husband expired last year, the upscale eatery offers rustic Lake Eden classy décor and an irresistible stream of free-lunch contests that have The Cookie Jar teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Although Hannah’s sometime boyfriend, dentist Norman Rhoades, assures her that Shawna Lee’s soggy confection can’t hold a candle to her Minnesota Peach Cobbler, Hannah’s not so sure, especially since she sees her other-time boyfriend Mike Kingston’s Hummer parked behind the Magnolia Blossom with suspicious frequency. So when Shawna Lee gets killed, it's a good thing that Hannah has an ironclad alibi: Along with most of Lake Eden, she’s at St. Peter’s Catholic Church watching her partner, Lisa Herman, marry sheriff Herb Beesman. In fact, one of the few Lake Edenites missing from the ceremony is Mike, whose conspicuous absence persuades Hannah that she’d better put her rhubarb custard cake on hold while she gets to the bottom of the mystery.
Although she ties up false leads a little too quickly, Hannah’s sixth—even without the 14 recipes—would be her tastiest yet.Pub Date: March 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-7582-0154-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A chilling story that's also filled with hope—a beloved Penny trademark.
Within a police force, some members must be trained in the science, and art, of solving murders. But does this training create people highly capable of committing them?
In Penny’s 12th Gamache novel, the former chief inspector takes up a new post. He’s not back to active investigating—not after finally having the chance to heal in the Québécois village of Three Pines. But he can’t pass up the chance to complete his yearslong fight to end corruption within the Sûreté. By taking the job as commander of the Sûreté Academy, he can clean the rot from its wealthiest source—the impressionable minds of cadet trainees. But Gamache makes a questionable decision in choosing to fight fire with fire. He decides to keep the most corrupt staff member, Serge “the Duke” Leduc, the former No. 2 of the Academy. Gamache’s choices verge on madness when he announces he will also bring on Michel Brébeuf—the original domino to fall within the Sûreté—as an example of how corruption can ruin you. In his lessons, Gamache invites his cadets to internalize these mottos: “Don't trust everything you think”—words for bettering their minds and investigative skills—as well as “a man's foes shall be they of his own household,” from Matthew 10:36—words of warning for what they may face ahead. These lessons become all too relevant when the Duke is found murdered and it’s clear the murderer is one of them. And then a copy of an old map is found at the crime scene, the same map Gamache is using as an exercise with four cadets he has brought under his wing and into his home (one lost soul in particular, freshman Amelia Choquet). Gamache is forced to accept that Leduc’s grip on the Academy is stronger and more suffocating than he thought possible. Is the household he has vowed to protect more unsafe than ever before? Young, learning minds are precious things, and Penny is here to make us aware of the evil out there, eager for a chance to mold—and poison—them.
A chilling story that's also filled with hope—a beloved Penny trademark.Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-02213-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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