Penny will have you turning the pages as fast as you can to see how she'll manage to tie everything together.
Welcome to Three Pines, the idyllic-seeming Canadian capital of murder.
At the heart of Penny’s series of mysteries set in the tiny Quebec town of Three Pines is the relationship between Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, the empathetic and capable head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec, and his headstrong second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, now also his son-in-law. Gamache has a talent for finding officers who’ve been languishing in their previous jobs and turning them into trusted allies, and Penny has frequently mentioned the way Beauvoir had been “banished to the basement” in an out-of-the-way bureau and that there was something “lean and feral…something dangerous” about him before Gamache swooped in and brought him to the homicide squad. Now, in her 18th installment, Penny flashes back to the case that brought the two men together. A woman named Clotilde Arsenault has been found dead in a remote lake, and Gamache shows up at the local detachment to investigate the case himself. Clotilde had two children, 13-year-old Fiona and Sam, 10, and it turns out she had been prostituting them. In the book’s present-day strand, Fiona is graduating from college after having served time in prison for killing her mother; Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, have supported her, almost folding her into their own family, but they’ve never trusted Sam, who will also be at the graduation ceremony. This chapter in Penny's chronicle of Three Pines contains all the elements that she sometimes divides up between different books: There's a cozy-feeling present-day mystery concerning a hidden room Fiona discovers by looking at the roofline of Myrna's bookstore, and the strange painting found inside; the harrowing story of how Gamache and Beauvoir cracked the case of Clotilde's murder; and a story of corruption within the institutions that are supposed to be protecting us. The plotting is complex and the characters as vivid as ever, but the opportunity to watch Gamache and Beauvoir's relationship develop is what makes this book one of Penny's best.
Penny will have you turning the pages as fast as you can to see how she'll manage to tie everything together.Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-2501-4529-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
Plenty of hair-raising adventures combine with more cerebral pursuits in this enjoyable tale.
A murder on a train carries echoes of another fateful railroad trip.
Library director Lindsey Norris and her husband, Mike Sullivan, are in Chicago attending a conference. During a book restoration lecture on the last day, someone leaves a bag under Lindsey’s seat containing a first edition of Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train inscribed from the author to Alfred Hitchcock, making it potentially very valuable. Lindsey turns it over to conference head Henry Standish, a man with a checkered past that’s earned him multiple enemies. Lindsey and Sully, along with Henry and many other conference participants, had taken a train from the East Coast to Chicago for the conference; now, as they settle into their roomette for the return trip, prospects for a pleasant ride turn sour when Lydia Armand—who took over Henry’s job after he was accused of fraud—turns up. That night, after some nasty verbal jousts, Lindsey hears thumping noises from the next compartment and sees a person shrouded in black in the passageway. The next morning, Henry is found murdered in his compartment. Upon the arrival of a dangerous snowstorm, the police remove passengers to a local inn near Briar Creek, Connecticut, Lindsey and Sully’s hometown, while they investigate. When the valuable book turns up in Lindsey’s laptop bag, she takes it to the police, while Sully, a boat captain, heads out in the storm to deliver food to nearby islands. Much to her consternation, Lindsey is unable to contact Sully, and a search discovers his boat drifting offshore. Clues from the boat indicate that Sully may have been spirited away, and Lindsey resolves to search for him while she seeks a motive for Standish’s murder.
Plenty of hair-raising adventures combine with more cerebral pursuits in this enjoyable tale.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780593639337
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
Scads of red herrings, peeks behind the show-biz curtain, and bountiful appended recipes will leave fans smiling contentedly.
An opportunity to promote the Village Blend coffeehouse turns into a murderous disaster.
Clare Cosi is a big fan of comedian Jerry Sullivan, so she’s thrilled when his popular TV series Only Murders in Gotham chooses the Village Blend as a place to shoot. Another fan is Clare’s barista Tucker, an actor who has a speaking role. The production has already suffered its share of problems. Jerry’s assistant has been injured in an accident, and Lizzy Meeks, the president of Jerry’s fan club, is stalking him. When it appears that the coffee in the craft services truck run by Driftwood Coffee, avowed enemy of the Village Blend, has poisoned the property master, who’s saved by the quick thinking of Clare’s coffee buyer and ex-husband Matt, Jerry cuts Driftwood loose, and Clare and Matt step in. When Jerry shoots Tucker with a gun containing a real bullet instead of blanks, only the fact that Tucker was smart enough to wear a bulletproof vest saves him and the production from disaster. Clare strikes up a friendship with an intern who turns out to be costar Kylee Ferris, who’ll be terrorized by a snake in her trailer. Amid all the other miscues, Clare, who’s helped solve many a murder, follows the property master to Central Park, where he’s shot dead. Though Clare’s fiance, Mike Quinn, is an NYPD detective whose position makes Clare’s own position awkward, he’s willing to ignore minor problems until Clare becomes a target.
Scads of red herrings, peeks behind the show-biz curtain, and bountiful appended recipes will leave fans smiling contentedly.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023
ISBN: 9780593197592
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2023
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