Chief Inspector Gamache

Review: The Black Wolf

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Cover image of "The Black Wolf" by Louise Penny

The Black Wolf

The Black Wolf (Chief Inspector Gamache, 20), Louise Penny. Minotaur Books (ISBN: 9781250328175) 2025.

Summary: Having arrested the “Black Wolf” trying to poison Montreal, Gamache realizes this was but a prelude to a greater threat.

If you read The Grey Wolf, you knew this book was coming. And if you did not, stop right here. That book gives the background for this, and this review gives details that will spoil the end of the Grey Wolf.

Gamache and his team have barely stopped an attempt to poison Montreal’s water supply as part of a power grab. The supposed mastermind, Marcus Lauzon, the Deputy Prime Minister, is now in solitary confinement. But Gamache, recovering at home, having lost his hearing due to a gun discharge meant to kill him, is beginning to doubt that the threat has been removed. They just may have been diverted off the trail of something bigger.

Not knowing who to trust, he has brought his closest associates, Beauvoir and LaCoste to Three Pines. Quietly, they have been studying the notebooks and a map left by slain biologist, Charles Langlois. But most of his notations are cryptic, and a laptop that may offer the key is still missing.

Another clue is equally puzzling. The Grey Wolf had given them this warning:

In a dry and parched land, where there is no water.

What that means, they have no clue. Canada has an abundance of water.

Slowly they piece together clues that convince them something bigger is going on. Woven into it are forest fires, atmospheric conditions, secret war plans and a treasonous international collaboration.

But back to Gamache’s doubts as to the identity of the Black Wolf. Is it Jeanne Caron, the popular current Prime Minister, a mob boss, or someone else? Or could it even be Lauzon? Penny tantalizes us with this throughout the book.

Like The Madness of Crowds, the book has surprised many readers with its prescience as to current events. In light of this, Penny includes an author note at the beginning of the book that she submitted the book to her publisher in September 2024, predating events that followed the U.S. presidential election in 2024. Most striking are her references to Canada as a “fifty-first state.”

It’s also striking that two meetings occur at the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, which straddles the US/Canada border. A black taped line runs through the middle of the building denoting the border. It has been a unique place where Canadians and Americans mix without checkpoints. Until this year. Now Canadians can’t enter the grand entrance on the US side without going through border control. An emergency exit on the Canada side serves as a temporary entrance.

Beyond details like this Penny explores our brave new social media world and its capacity for misinformation and deep fakes where interviews and videos can be doctored to say the opposite of what they were meant to reveal. In addition, Penny explores the international implications of climate-related events including fires, smoke pollution, and water shortages.

Like many of Penny’s books, this one has a hair-raising finish, one that stretched plausibility for me at points. However, one of the most interesting plot elements is that there is a point at which Gamache intentionally misleads Beauvoir. One senses that something shifts in their relationship. Plot material for a future book?

However, her larger scenario didn’t stretch plausibility. It was bleak and scarily realistic for me. It was only relieved by the beautifully ordinary life of Three Pines with an eccentric poet and her  duck Rosa, and all the people who gather at the Bistro for exquisitely good food. Perhaps that is a parable of how we must live in our time. That is, we enjoy the good, true, and beautiful of the given day, thankful for and praying for the Gamaches that stand between us and annihilation.

Review: The Grey Wolf

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Cover image of "The Grey Wolf" by Louise Penny

The Grey Wolf (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache Number 19), Louise Penny. Minotaur Books (ISBN: 9781250328144) 2024.

Summary: Gamache, Jean-Guy, and Isabelle seek to avert a plotted catastrophe, trusting no one but each other.

It was worth the wait. It’s been two years since the last in the Gamache series, Penny taking a year off. The result was a riveting, edge-of-the seat work involving a scary plot in which tens of thousands could die.

It all begins on a quiet August Sunday, interrupted by a series of phone calls to Gamache’s private line. Finally, he picks it up, listens, says “Go to hell,” and hangs up. Not a wrong number but a wrong person, Jeanne Caron, responsible for adding to the suffering of Gamache’s son Daniel as a payback for Gamache’s refusing to bend the law for a political favor. She wanted to meet and called on a number known only to family and friends.

Then more strange things occur. While at the bistro, the alarm goes off to a flat they owned in Montreal. It appeared to be a faulty sensor. Leaving the bistro, Gamache sees a man who is vaguely familiar. At the Montreal flat, nothing was amiss. Except for a jacket, mailed back to Gamache with a cryptic list of herbs in the pocket and a request to meet at a cafe.

A man shows up for the meeting, a freelance biologist with a drug-abusing past. He hints at a terrible plot but leaves it to Gamache to figure out. As they leave the cafe, a driver heads toward them. Gamache leaps to save a grandfather and grandchild. The biologist is killed.

All this sets Gamache and his team in pursuit of the killers, one of whom they find executed, and what Langlois, the biologist, was trying to tell him. But it quickly becomes apparent that Gamache can only trust Jean-Guy and Isabelle. Thus, who is friend and who is enemy is not clear. For example, even his superior, the woman Gamache recommended when he stepped down from the position, is suspect. And Jeanne Caron? Why did she call?

And that familiar man at the bistro? It was none other than the abbot of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, Dom Phillippe (see book eight). But this was no random visit. He leaves a message for Gamache at the village church, a piece of paper connected to the paper in his jacket pocket. And a bottle of Chartreuse at the bistro.

This leads a hair-raising flight to the remote location of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. No Dom Phillippe but they find a map from Langlois. Meanwhile Isabelle travels to DC, the Vatican and an abbey in France. And Gamache continues to search for notebooks Langlois left behind, increasingly convinced that what Langlois died trying to warn him about was a plot to poison Montreal’s water supply.

Not able to trust insiders in the Surete, Gamache goes outside. For example, he offers dirt on himself to a blogger hostile to him for her investigative efforts. He gains the trust of the crusty Mission director, where Langlois sought refuge for a time. The pattern of reaching out to those on the margins, those discounted by others, continues.

But will their fevered efforts be in time and enough? And who is behind this plot? And why? Penny keeps us turning the pages to find out.

The residents of Three Pines play a supporting role to Gamache’s family, sheltering in Three Pines, but little more. Given the focus of the plot, there is little room for development of these characters. That said, Ruth acts totally in character. There are indications of a deepening rapprochement between Daniel and Armand.

And the title? Wolves turn up at several places but key is a story Armand tell Jean-Guy about Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, which means Saint Gilbert Between the Wolves. It comes from a story a Cree chief told the first abbot about two wolves inside us, a grey and black one, the first strong, compassionate, and wise. the second, cruel and cunning. The question is, which wolf will win? The answer: the one we feed. In this book, we learn of a grey wolf. And in the after matter, we learn that Penny’s next book, in 2025, is titled The Black Wolf. So, strap in folks, for more good reading ahead!

For Gamache readers, if you want to refresh your memory of the preceding books (and especially book 8, The Beautiful Mystery), you might find my blog post, The Reviews: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache Series, helpful.

Review: A World of Curiosities

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A World of Curiosities, Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Press, 2022.

Summary: The arrival in Three Pines of a sister and brother involved in a murder case that brought Armand and Jean Guy and the opening of a sealed room and the strange painting found within confront Gamache with two of his greatest fears.

Bricks. They are all over this story. The instrument of murder in a case that brought Armand and Jean Guy together. The means used 160 years ago to seal up a room filled with strange objects and a copy of a famous painting altered in sinister ways signifying to Gamache that an old nemesis is on the loose.

The murder case and the room summon two fears in the mind of Gamache. The murder was of a drug-addicted prostitute who prostituted her children. Jean Guy, languishing in the basement of the district detachment under a corrupt boss, is called on to assist Gamache. As the mother had deteriorated, the children took over, and then murdered the mother. With a brick. The older girl, Fiona Arsenault, confessed, but Gamache was never certain. There was a chilling something about her brother Sam, something deeply broken and disturbing. And while Sam bonded with Jean Guy, he hated Gamache for ending what he and his sister had.

Fiona, against Gamache’s wishes, went to prison. While there, he sponsored her when she discovered an aptitude for engineering. He and Reine Marie became mentors to her. Sam survived, first in a foster home, then in a variety of jobs, traveling about, becoming a strikingly handsome young man.

In the present, Myrna’s niece Harriet is graduating, as is Fiona and they are all present. Fiona, now out of prison is staying with the Gamaches. Only Sam shows up as well, staying at the B & B. The contempt for Gamache is still there, and all his fears and instincts are aroused, even as Sam wins Harriet’s heart. Myrna, in her previous life as a Montreal psychologist, had interviewed Sam. She shared Gamache’s concerns that he could be a sociopath, or worse. Jean Guy disagrees.

Converging with all this, a 160 year old letter to Billy Williams reveals the existence of a hidden room bricked up by Billy’s ancestor, a stone mason. It is connected to Myrna’s loft and could make a great extra room for Harriet. Yet the reasons for bricking up the room and why this came to Billy at this time raise suspicions. And indeed, what they find in the room is “a world of curiosities.” There is an old grimoire, a book of potions, of herbal remedies, and more, that could get a woman killed for witchcraft. There is a statue that had gone missing after a strange guest stayed at the B & B, covered with strange markings. And there is a painting, a copy of The Paston Treasure with menacing additions from the present. It is the additions that increasingly disturb Gamache, as he figures out they are meant for him.

They signal that a nemesis thought to be locked away is afoot. How did these contemporary objects get into a sealed room? Only a meticulous mind could do this, a master of disguise. But he is locked away in a high security prison. Or is he?

Two who hated Gamache. Two with access to Three Pines. Even the home of the Gamaches, endangering all he loved. They both seem to know everything about Gamache. Can he get into their heads as they have his? And can he go deeper, and walk into his fears? And will it be enough?

So much has turned on the kindness of Gamache, especially to Fiona. Early on, a mentor had cautioned him with the words of Matthew 10:36, “And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” Yet the Gamaches make themselves vulnerable in their care for Fiona, their tendency to take in the needy. They’ve also done this for Amelia Chocquet, even as years ago, they did so with Jean Guy, who has tried to show kindness to Sam. So much turns in this story on whether this is weakness, foolishness, or strength.

We also see two ways and their fruit: the way of a deep bitterness and how this consumes, and the way of facing one’s brokenness, the admission of wrongs and the power of forgiveness. Armand is forced by the evil that threatens to look in and wrestle with these two ways in his own life.

All I will say about the ending of this book is that if you have a heart condition, you may want to seek your physician’s advice before reading it. This is Louise Penny at the top of her game.

The Reviews: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache Series

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Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

I recently finished Louise Penny’s The Madness of Crowds, the seventeenth in her Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, and the most recently published. [Updated 12/13/2022: Number 18 in the series, A World of Curiosities has been published and a review for the book has now been added.] For the moment, there are no more Gamache novels to read, unless I go back and re-read the series. This has quite simply been one of the best series I’ve read. While Penny’s books are often favored by women readers, I’ve found myself drawn by the strong male characters, especially Armand and Jean Guy. Particularly, I want to grow up to be like Armand! Equally, I find myself deeply appreciating the strong and diverse female characters–Reine Marie, Clara, Myrna, Isabelle Lacoste, and of course, Ruth (and Rosa!). Like so many readers, I want to live in Three Pines, or foster the kind of Three Pines community where I live (perhaps one of Penny’s hopes). I also have been provoked to thought, and not a little self-examination, by Penny’s insight that a murder often begins many years before with a nursed grievance allowed to fester. Finally, there are Gamache’s four sentences that lead to wisdom:

I don’t know.

I need help.

I’m sorry.

I was wrong.

The older I get, the more I find myself saying these things and I find myself looking back at my younger self and wish I’d learned this wisdom sooner.

I thought it would be fun to create a page with all my Gamache reviews. While I try to avoid spoilers in the reviews, those of subsequent books may give away plot details you’d rather discover for yourself if you haven’t read the previous ones. But if you are like me and want to go back and remember, this might prove helpful. I’ve just included publication info, a brief summary, and a link to the full review.

Still Life (Chief Inspector Gamache #1), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2005.

Summary: The suspicious death of Jane Neal a day after her painting is accepted into an art show brings Gamache and his team to Three Pines, and to the grim conclusion that someone in this small community is a murderer. Review

A Fatal Grace (Chief Inspector Gamache #2), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur, 2006.

Summary: An unliked but aspiring author comes to Three Pines and is murdered in front of a crowd at a curling match yet no one sees how it happened. Review

The Cruelest Month (Chief Inspector Gamache #3), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2007.

Summary: Gamache returns to Three Pines to solve a murder during a seance at the old Hadley House while forces within the Surete’ (and on his team) plot his downfall to avenge the Arnot case. Review

A Rule Against Murder (Chief Inspector Gamache #4), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2008.

Summary: The Gamache’s getaway to a peaceful lodge is interrupted, first by an unloving family reunion, and then by the death of one of the family, crushed under a statue. Meanwhile, the naming of a child forces Gamache to face his own family history. Review

The Brutal Telling (Chief Inspector Gamache #5), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2009.

Summary: The body of an unknown man is found in the bistro of Gabri and Olivier, and Olivier is the chief suspect! Review

Bury Your Dead (Chief Inspector Gamache #6), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2010.

Summary: Gamache and Beauvoir are on leave after an attempt to rescue an agent goes terribly wrong. As each faces their own traumas they get caught up in murder investigations in Quebec City and Three Pines. Review

A Trick of the Light (Chief Inspector Gamache #7), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur, 2012.

Summary: The vernissage for Clara’s art show is a stunning success with glowing reviews only to be spoiled when the body of her estranged childhood friend is found in her flowerbed. Review

The Beautiful Mystery (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #8), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2013.

Summary: While solving a case involving the murder of a prior in a remote monastery, Gamache must confront his arch-nemesis Chief Superintendent Sylvain Françoeur. Review

How the Light Gets In (Chief Inspector Gamache #9), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Press, 2013.

Summary: The murder of the last Ouellet quintuplet, a former client and friend of Myrna’s brings Gamache back to Three Pines which serves as a hidden base of operations as Sylvain Francoeur’s efforts to destroy Gamache comes to a head. Review

The Long Way Home (Chief Inspector Gamache #10), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur, 2015.

Summary: Gamache’s peaceful retirement is interrupted when Peter Morrow fails to return as agreed a year after his separation from Clara and they embark on a search taking them to a desolate corner of Quebec. Review

The Nature of the Beast (Chief Inspector Gamache #11), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2016.

Summary: A young boy from Three Pines, prone to fantastic tales, reports seeing a big gun with a strange symbol, and then is found dead, setting off a search for a murderer, and an effort to thwart a global threat. Review, Second Review

A Great Reckoning (Chief Inspector Gamache #12), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2016.

Summary: Gamache returns to the Sûreté as Commander of its Academy, and finds himself at the center of a murder investigation of one of its corrupt professors. Review

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. Review

Kingdom of the Blind (Chief Inspector Gamache #14), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2018.

Summary: Gamache, Myrna, and Benedict, a young building maintenance worker who hopes to be a builder are named as liquidators of the estate of a cleaning woman while Amelia Choquet, caught with drugs, is expelled from the Academy to the streets as a powerful and lethal drug is about to hit. Review

A Better Man (Chief Inspector Gamache #15), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2019.

Summary: Gamache, Beauvoir, and Lacoste are together again, searching for a missing girl amid rising floods and a flood of social media attacks against Gamache and the art of Clara Morrow. Review

All the Devils Are Here (Chief Inspector Gamache #16), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2020.

Summary: A family visit of the Gamaches to children in Paris suddenly becomes an investigation into the attempted murder of Stephen Horowitz, Armand’s godfather, and the murder of a close associate, and will put the Gamaches in great peril. Review

The Madness of Crowds (Chief Inspector Gamache #17), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2021.

Summary: A Christmas assignment to provide security for a professor proposing mercy killing leads to a murder investigation in Three Pines. Review

A World of Curiosities, Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Press, 2022.

Summary: The arrival in Three Pines of a sister and brother involved in a murder case that brought Armand and Jean Guy and the opening of a sealed room and the strange painting found within confront Gamache with two of his greatest fears.

The most recent novel in this series envisions what it is like to emerge from the pandemic. One thing I would say is that this series has been one of the things that got me through the pandemic. My review of the first volume was posted on April 2, 2020, less than a month after the world locked down. The most recent posted June 13, 2022, a bit over two years later. Pandemic has morphed into endemic and the new normal is a scarier world of war in Ukraine, inflation, gun violence, and political discord stretching from Sri Lanka to the United States. Amid all the murders (both in the real world and the books), the Gamache series reminds me of the goodness that remains, a goodness worth fighting and resisting for as well as celebrating in our daily lives. And there is one more goodness, at least…Louise Penny is still writing and book 18, A World of Curiosities, is expected in late 2022. When I get the chance to read it, and any subsequent numbers, it and they will be added to the list!

[Updated 12/13/2022: The review of book 18, A World of Curiosities is now included in this list.]

Review: The Madness of Crowds

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The Madness of Crowds (Chief Inspector Gamache #17), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2021.

Summary: A Christmas assignment to provide security for a professor proposing mercy killing leads to a murder investigation in Three Pines.

It began with a request to provide security for a speech at a nearby university at an old gym over the Christmas holidays.. It seems like something far beneath the pay grade of Gamache until he investigates the speaker. Abigail Robinson is a polished academic, comfortable with statistics who speaks with calm conviction. She had submitted a report to the Canadian government about pandemic deaths that concluded with a startling proposal. The havoc wrought on the economy meant that the government couldn’t continue to support the elderly and others with disabilities. The answer was mercy killing. And she assures her audiences with this familiar tag line, “All will be well” or in Quebec, “ça va bien aller.” Her message cuts like a sword, attracting a growing social media following of those who embrace her ideas and a contingent of those outraged that such a thing might even be considered.

Gamache recognizes the danger such an event represents. He knows he cannot legally stop her but pleads that the university cancel the event. Citing free speech, they refuse. A huge and volatile crowd of all ages arrives and despite security, an attempt is made on her life. Only Gamache’s reaction saves her…and he wonders if he should have.

The professor’s ideas reach deeply into Gamache’s circle. His granddaughter Idola, Jean Guy’s daughter, is a Downs Syndrome child. She would be a candidate for mercy killing. Both Gamache and Beauvoir struggle not only with the inherent moral issue Professor Robinson’s ideas raise, but the reality that they could not let this happen to Idola, even as they also understand the reality of the challenges of care for a special needs child.

Meanwhile, a Nobel prize nominee, Haniya Daoud, is visiting Three Pines, the guest of Myrna, who was one of the first to support her human rights organization in Canada. She relentlessly works to free children and women in bondage in South Sudan. She’s fierce, having killed her own drunken captor to escape, and killing others to free captive children. Her face bears the physical scars of her captivity. There are other scars that go deeper, including a hatred for law enforcement. Having heard about Abigail Robinson, whose ideas are against all she stands for, she calls Gamache a coward for protecting her.

While Gamache’s team investigates the murder attempt, which involved more than the person apprehended, Professor Robinson and her assistant Debbie Schneider are given protection but asked not to leave Chancellor Collette Roberge’s home. Roberge had been a mentor to Abigail Robinson after her father’s death and was responsible for the invitation to speak. On New Year’s Eve, Roberge was invited to a gathering at the Hadley House, now the Auberge, and she brings Abigail and Debbie along. Vincent Gilbert, “the Asshole Saint” we’ve encountered in earlier volumes is there. There is an uncomfortable encounter when Gilbert challenges the morality of what Robinson is proposing and she brings up the name of Ewan Cameron, whose unethical psychological experiments were used by the CIA in interrogations, that left a trail of human wreckage that will become important to the plot. We learn later that Gilbert was a lowly lab assistant caring for animals who knew what was happening and did nothing, a secret he’d protected for years, now exposed.

The New Year’s celebration occurs. Kids light sparklers, there is a huge fireworks display, couples kiss, teens go off in the woods to drink. Just before midnight, Debbie and Collette step outside. Minutes later, as Billy Williams is extinguishing the bonfire, kids race out of the woods, reporting a body laying in the snow. Gamache fears it is Robinson, but when the crime scene investigators arrive, it is discovered to be Debbie Schneider, dead from blunt force trauma from a piece of firewood. They face two questions. Did the killer mistake her for Abigail or was she the target? And who is the killer? Vincent Gilbert? Collette Roberge? Abigail Robinson herself? The son of the man arrested for the gym incident, who was working the party? Or maybe Haniya Daoud, who has killed before?

Penney raises important questions. How has the pandemic changed us? Has the cavalier disregard for elder lives in care settings on the part of some, opened the door to consider measures like mercy killing that were once off the table? Are the elderly and those with disabilities a “drag” on the economy and a burden to society we cannot afford? On what basis will we defend their right to life? And what price are we willing to pay for our safety? Ewan Cameron was not a fictional character. Unsuspecting patients, often women suffering post-partum depression, were victims of his CIA research which used curare, LSD, electroconvulsive shock, and sensory deprivation. The CIA continues to use the fruits of his research in interrogations.

Gamache has to wrestle with these issues as he prepares his own report on the horrors he witnessed in care facilities during the pandemic. And Beauvoir will confront these in a very different way in the climactic scene of the novel. I also find myself wondering if we’ve seen the last of Haniya Daoud. Louise Penny is still writing!

Review: All the Devils Are Here

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All the Devils Are Here (Chief Inspector Gamache #16), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur Books, 2020.

Summary: A family visit of the Gamaches to children in Paris suddenly becomes an investigation into the attempted murder of Stephen Horowitz, Armand’s godfather, and the murder of a close associate, and will put the Gamaches in great peril.

” ‘Hell is empty, Armand,’ said Stephen Horowitz.

‘You’ve mentioned that. And all the devils are here?” asked Armand Gamache.”

All the Devils Are Here. p. 1.

This opening conversation seems strange in the garden of the Musee Rodin as Armand and his godfather Stephen Horowitz, an aging but active venture capitalist, who raised Armand from age nine, talk in the safety of each other’s company, sitting in front of Rodin’s statue, The Gates of Hell. Armand had always felt safe with this man. They are in Paris on a joyous occasion, the imminent birth of a child to Annie and Jean-Guy, and a chance to visit Daniel and Roslyn. They agree to meet that night for dinner with the whole family.

After dinner as they walk, tragedy strikes. Stephen Horowitz is run down by a van. To Gamache it is no accident, but intentional, and as Stephen lays clinging to life, Gamache works with Claude Dussault, the Prefect of Police in Paris to uncover who is behind all this. But not before the Armand and Reine-Marie find a second man gunned down in Stephen’s apartment, which has been ransacked in what appears an unsuccessful search, the Gamaches interrupting the gunman.

The whole family soon becomes involved. It becomes apparent that the engineering firm with which Jean-Guy is working, a position secretly arranged by Stephen, has been the target of Stephen’s efforts, that were to culminate with Stephen’s attendance at an upcoming board meeting. Jean-Guy searches for what could have been so important to cover up in the firm, GHS, drawing the attention of a security guard who turns out to be more than that. Daniel digs into financial transactions Stephen had with his bank, imperiling his safety. Reine-Marie works with a famous French archivist to discover both the secrets hidden in some cryptic dates Stephen had written on a piece of paper, and to learn the truth about disturbing allegations about Stephen’s past.

The investigations put the whole family at risk, and they move into a lavish suite Stephen mysteriously rented for his stay rather than using his own apartment, where they could be better protected. But the secret whose threads they are unraveling is apparently so dire that those concealing it have left a trail of bodies in their wake, including a journalist investigating a GHS mine and a mysterious train derailment. And the trail of corruption appears to include even Gamache’s old friend Dussault. What protection do they have if the Paris police are corrupted?

Along the way, we discover more about Gamache’s childhood with Stephen, and about the cause of the estrangement between Gamache and his son Daniel, going back to Daniel’s childhood. And Gamache and Jean-Guy are teamed up once more, for those of us who feared we’d seen the end of their teamwork.

The two things that make this a riveting read are the effort to uncover GHS’s buried secret and the question of whether Gamache and the family team (plus a few others) will be able to outsmart and outmaneuver those willing to stop at nothing to protect that secret. They are not even sure of who the “devils” may be and whether they are in their very midst. All this leads to a heart-stopping climax at Stephen’s apartment.

Once again, resolute love runs through this book–the love between Armand and Stephen, expressed with great tenderness at Stephen’s bedside, the love Armand has for his family, even, and especially the estranged Daniel, who at the same time realizes that Jean-Guy has become something to Armand that Daniel is not able to share.

Which brings me back to what captures my appreciation for this series. It is not just the consummate storytelling, but above all the character of Gamache and those around him, people of resolve, integrity, and grace who at least this reader wants to emulate.