Glass Houses (Chief Inspector Gamache #13), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2017.

Summary: A mysterious figure robed in black, the murder of a woman found in those robes, a confession, and a trial, during which Gamache has made choices of conscience that could cost lives and save many.

A woman is on trial for a murder in Three Pines and Gamache is the key prosecution witness. The previous fall, a mysterious, black-cloaked figure appears on the village green. Everyone is disturbed, including four friends visiting Myrna, friends who have often visited, but never this late in the fall. They look to Gamache, now Chief Superintendent to do something, but the figure has broken no law other than stand there and stare toward the Bistro, especially toward a dishwasher and aspiring cook, Anton. Feeling runs high, with Gamache intervening to prevent bodily harm. The next morning, the figure which they have discovered is a cobrador, or “conscience,” is gone.

Then Reine-Marie discovers the body in a black robe and mask in the basement of the village chapel. The body turns out to be that of Katie Evans, one of the four visiting Myrna. Chief Inspector LaCoste and her team come to investigate. A key detail is a bat, the murder weapon, found near the body. Yet Reine-Marie, who notices everything did not mention seeing that bat. Subsequently a baker, Jacqueline, goes to Gamache’s house and makes a confession. Indeed, the evidence points toward her. Except for the discrepancy of the bat. But why the cobrador, and why did Katie end up the one murdered?

It is at this trial that Gamache is testifying, confronted by a prosecutor, Zalmanowitz, who is hostile toward his own witness. A rookie judge, assigned to the trial, begins to sense something is up. A key moment in the trial comes when Gamache testifies about the bat. He perjures himself, something we can never imagine him doing.

What is going on? It all has to do with a desperate strategy Gamache has set in motion around the time of the murder. It raises profound questions of conscience. May the law be disobeyed for the sake of a higher law, and a potentially greater good? Can this be done when it will likely cost the loss of lives, at least some of which could have been prevented, but at the expense of a greater victory? And what if such a strategy implicates the prosecutor, the judge, Jean Guy, and the top leadership of the Surete, as well as himself?

Aside from these weighty questions for which Gamache bears the weight of decision and responsibility, there are other sparkling aspects of this story. We witness the growing bond between Jean Guy and Ruth Zardo, almost his alter ego, and the sheer courage and compassion of Ruth in the climactic scene. We see Clara’s artistic genius turned to the figures of Three Pines and we wonder when she will paint Gamache. And in the presence of the cobrador, we see the residents confess to each other their moral failures, aware that the light of conscience usually reveals something unseemly in all of us. As is Gamache, aware of the momentous choices he has made that will rest on his conscience.