Wow, hopping from the last pages of a Dennis Lehane novel right into a Louise Penny book is quite a shift in style. Their styles are as different as Quebec French and Dorchester’s version of English!
But both are police procedurals, and within the first three pages of this book we are already hearing how Armand Gamache has somehow kept his humanity instead of becoming a wife-beating alcoholic like the other inspectors. Which sentiment could have come right out of the Lehane book!
50 pages in the synchroncity continues… A woman’s frozen body has been found and the edge of a frozen lake deep in the frozen wilds of Quebec province (it’s wintertime :).
I do most of my reading in little spurts at dinner time nowadays, and a this is not the best book for that. There’s a lot of walk-on townspeople with opinions and small parts, and I’m afraid may have I lost the thread a bit…
When the police check out the dead woman’s flat they find two young and abused children, and stuff going on! There’s a brand new TV. Someone tried to wipe the woman’s hard drive. There was still enough evidence to nail a creepy crooked policeman, (he bought the TV!). It’s dramatic but does not advance the plot very much, because the cop goes to jail, and the kids are still massively f—ed up and a vaguely disconcerting presence continues to lurk in everyone’s life.
70 pages in we flash-forward to the present day when the young lady is graduating from the Polytechnic Institute, under Gamache’s sponsorship.
The boy and the girl are both really smart, genius-level kids. Gamache was immediately drawn to the girl, and has looked out for her into young adulthood. On the other hand, it was hate at first sight between Gamache and the boy, Sam.
Gamache’s second in command, Beauvior balances it out by instinctively loving Sam at first sight, and distrusting the girl (Fiona). Sam butters him up pretty shamelessly … just the way we would expect a psychopath to do …
The big plot point we seem to be heading for is:
- Fiona — beloved and trusted by Gamache
— distrusted at a gut level by Beauvior - Sam — distrusted and feared by Gamache since childhood
— trusted by Beauvior, who he flatters shamelessly.
Looking back, it seems like pretty lazy plotting to me, but she’s a graceful write and I’m already here, so let’s figure this thing out!
After I make it to the end of this I think I’m done with child abuse books for a while. Maybe a nice simple western! The chances of running into a child abuse western are pretty slim I hope.
Anyway, the plot is turning. Both the kids are teenagers now, very smart and accomplished teenagers. The girl and Gamache have a sort of natural attachment to each other. Likewise the boy and Beauvior are a pair. Gamache thinks the boy is the evil mastermind, and surprise, Beauvior thinks the girl is the evil mastermind.
The one thing that does not ring true to me is that Gamache is always seeing Sam make little subtle disrespectful to him, but no one else ever sees these! Likewise the Sam fans always see some hidden evil lurking in the eyes of Fiona, but nobody else ever see it!
120 pages in we find that how we got here is that these two lovely children conspired to kill their mother. There’s a lot of noise, but the upshot seems to be that Fiona did it and went to prison for it, but is now out because Gamache advocated for her.
By page 140, many years have passed. Fiona has been sponsored by the Gamache’s and she lives with them while she goes to enginering school. Sam is around somewhere
170 pages It’s getting complicated – a hidden room has been discovered at the bookshop.
Somebody’s daughter Harriet is falling for Sam. The world continue to be divided pretty evenly between folks who sense evil in Sam and pure thoughts in Fiona, and people who sense the opposite. I’m losing track of everybody!
A new character! To set up the incident room for this newly discovers secret room, Gamache has called for this punker chick from the city. She provides some comic relief as everyone is disconcerted by her hostility and all around weirdness (clicking her tongue post in Morse code that only Gamache understands is pretty weird to me!).
But around page 200 she provides us all a useful service. We get a reprise the (too complicated) plot by having everyone explain to her WTF is going on. Armand explains how awesome he thinks (Fiona) is, and (Sam) creeps him out.
Jean-Guy then has his turn: Sam’s a solid guy, Fiona’s a weirdo.
220 pages Lotta stuff going on. One of these kids is a criminal mastermind for sure. Heck, maybe both of them are! 🙂
One of them dropped hints tht only Gamache would get from an earlier books that threaten him, his wife, and his kids. So he’s freaked!
310 pages Oh, the danger is ratcheting – I gotta finish this book and put myself out of my misery. 🙂
Gamache visits the maximum security prison and discovered that the arch-psychopath he wanted to interview is NOT THERE! An impersonator is in his place and the psycho has been loose in the world for the last 3 years … or maybe the last 10 years … no one really knows. But Gamache is pretty sure that this whole hidden room and fake artwork thing was orchestrated by the psychopath to get him and his family.
… You get the idea. A whole lot going on here.
I will spoil it just a little to say that all the good guys and their families survive although it’s a little dicey there for a few pages. Even the punker girl comes out OK!
Oh, Gamache was slightly less wrong about his psychopath than Beauvior was about his, so the order of the universe is maintained. I’m not sure Penny would write a book where some else was more correct than Gamache at the end of the book. 🙂
I’m kind of exhausted!