A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny

by Carol3 Comments
I love Penny's Gamache series and this one was even better than the last couple. Gamache has taken the position of Commander of the Sûreté academy, the last bastion of the corruption that has plagues the Sûreté and a place to stop the corruption in its earliest stages, with the training of the cadets. And of course, there's a murder. One of the professors is killed, and no one at the academy is above suspicion, including Gamache  and the cadets. It's a very personal mystery for Gamache and a complicated situation. Is murder sometimes justifiable? Is anyone beyond redemption?\ As always, it's the characters the drive the mystery. With several trips to Three Pines and the homicide at the school, we meet most of the old familiar characters we know and love, but the new folks are well-drawn. The people here are real, even Gamache. They have strengths, but faults too, loyalties and habits. There's also the mystery of the old map, why it was...
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The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny

by Carol10 Comments
I love Penny's Gamache series. I may want to live in Three Pines and be friends with the characters - as long as I didn't get murdered; it's one of those towns where you don't want to be a minor character or a new arrival. Actually, there are a lot of new characters in this one and we know one (or more) is the killer. The Nature of the Beast is set in Three Pines, where Inspector Gamache has now retired with his wife Reine Marie, but of course life can't be quiet for Gamache. A young boy is killed in the village and by not believing what the boy had told him, Gamache feels partly responsible for the death. At the same time, the local amateur theater is planning on producing a play written by a serial killer. As readers, or listeners in my case, we know the two have to be connected, but the question is how. This time, the...
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Audiobook Review: The Long Way Home by Louise Penny

by Carol5 Comments
I don't know where to start with my feelings about The Long Way Home. I love this series, but this was not one of my favorite installments. Even though it's a mystery, it's more interested in character than plot, in thoughts and feelings than actions, which has been true of all Penny's books; it's what makes them stand out. It also makes it a series best read from the beginning, to know the characters, to learn their stories, the things that are important to them, how they interact with each other. However, it can also make it slow, a bit plodding. It's also not a typical mystery in that it doesn't start with a crime, it starts as the search. There are eventually crimes uncovered, and there is a murder, but not til late in the story. I don't think that's really a spoiler: there's always a murder in her mysteries. I hate to admit that I didn't actually like Peter....
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