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Louise Penny is a giant in the world of crime fiction, a perennial New York Times bestseller and a winner of countless awards, and with the publication of her 15th Chief Inspector Gamache title, A Better Man, she further extends her legend. Penny earned a Bachelor of Applied Arts (Radio and Television) from After her marriage, Penny left the CBC to take up writing. A New York Times bestselling author and five-time Agatha Award winner (among many others), Louise Penny captured lightning in a bottle when she created her Quebecois detective hero, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.. But it isn't the only menace Gamache is facing. The public vigorously objects to his reinstatement, some of the younger Sûreté agents are like-minded, and the situation is awkward all around.As the April thaw takes a nasty turn and the rivers of Québec reach flood levels, the Rivière Bella Bella must be sandbagged in order to protect the tiny village of Three Pines from disaster. The investigation into what happened six months ago – the events that led to his suspension – has dragged on into the dead of winter. One night in search of lost time. Well-known characters return and new faces add richness to a narrative that will keep readers intrigued until the last page." In the middle of the turmoil a father approaches Gamache, pleading for help in finding his daughter. When a peculiar letter arrives inviting Armand Gamache to an abandoned farmhouse, the former head of the Sûreté du Québec discovers that a complete stranger has named him one of the executors of her will. Sometimes it feels as though she’s assembling her thoughts from pieces of modeling clay, one chunk at a time.Take her description of Gamache at the beginning of Chapter Two:“His complexion was that of someone who’d spent hours in open fields, in damp forests, in knee-deep snow, staring at bodies.
Spread over decades.”This uneven rhythm takes some getting used to, and it may be a little off-putting to readers looking for a smoother, more polished style of prose, but it’s part of what makes this author so successful at what she does.
"Visceral and haunting... one that lingers long after its voyage is over. And as a symbol of order in the face of the chaos that threatened.”Most definitely, those of us who also like to wear suits and crisp white shirts can only smile and nod at having had their importance to us articulated so well.Penny has a very distinctive writing style that first-time readers should be aware of—short paragraphs, frequent use of sentence fragments, repetitiveness. When a mysterious figure appears in Three Pines one cold November day, Armand Gamache and the rest of the villagers are at first curious. She takes a risk playing them off against the police procedural elements that dominate when Gamache and his Sûreté colleagues pursue their investigation, but she’s too good a writer to slip and fall. None of them had ever met the elderly woman. The Chief Inspector Armand Gamache book series is written by Louise Penny.
Louise Penny is a giant in the world of crime fiction, a perennial Armand Gamache has returned to work with the Sûreté du Québec after a traumatic firefight in a previous adventure caused him to be demoted and suspended.He finds himself assigned once again to homicide, but this time subordinate to his son-in-law and former second in command, Chief Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir. Take the same backwater in Québec, the same core of main characters, and write fifteen crime stories with that. She uses these local characters to create brief, resonant moments of insight into the human condition, her true object of study.For example, when the father of the murdered young woman hides in a room in Gamache’s house, unwilling to talk to anyone, Ruth comes to the locked door and quotes something she tells him St. Francis said to a woman who’d lost her child in a river: Other, briefer brush strokes also jump off the page.