Review by New York Times Review
LOUISE PENNY wrote the book on escapist mysteries - a dozen of them, in fact, almost all set in the sheltered Canadian village of Three Pines. "It was a haven, a buffer, from the cares and cruelty of the world," she tells us in GLASS HOUSES (Minotaur, $28.99), a place seemingly so free of malice and discord that Armand Gamache, chief superintendent of the Surete du Québec, and his wife, Reine-Marie, have made it their sanctuary. One of the pleasures of returning to this series is visiting old friends in the village like Gabri and Olivier, who run the convivial B&B; the artist Clara Morrow, whose startling portraits will haunt you; and (a personal favorite) Ruth ¿ardo, a poet who accurately describes herself as "a crazy old woman who prays for Satan and has a duck." The strangeness starts with the traditional Halloween party at the local bistro, attended by a masked, hooded figure in a black cloak who reappears the following day to take up sentry duty on the village green. Still as death and silent as the grave, the visitor resists efforts to engage him in conversation. After a while, people just leave him alone and go about their business - all except a Spanish-speaking guest at the B&B who identifies this specter as a cobrador del frac, a collector of unpaid debts (including moral debts) who follows defaulters, shaming them with his remorseless gaze. In the presence of this wraith, the villagers begin to exhume their own guilty secrets. A creepy twist in the narrative traces the cobrador back to medieval Spain, when plague victims, lepers and witches were consigned to a remote island to die. Those who survived and managed to return to the mainland silently stalked the people who had banished them and, over the years, became mythic figures. In his dark robes, the cobrador becomes a vivid metaphor for opioids like fentanyl, the "modern-day Black Death" that drug cartels are smuggling across the border through Three Pines and into Vermont. If Gamache can't contain this plague, our last hope may be Superman. WELCOME TO THE CRYPT, a "celluloid necropolis" for folks like Alex Whitman, a snarky film fanatic who has been hired by another fanatic to find what may be the first motion picture ever made. Jonathan Skariton's debut novel, SÉANCE INFERNALE (Knopf, $26.95), named for that very item, is a dense but thrilling exploration of the mystery surrounding a film that was said to have predated both Edison and the brothers Lumiere, but disappeared, along with its inventor, on a train to Paris in 1890. The plot is packed with film ephemera, some of it mesmerizing, some of it as unnecessary as the secondary plot, set in Edinburgh (what would mystery writers do without Edinburgh?), about a present-day serial killer who stashes his victims in the underground vaults of the Old City. "Some of these art-house freak films make my skin crawl," says a police constable, referring to the killer's snuff video. But as long as Skariton keeps to movie history, we can concentrate on other mysteries - like whether Edison murdered his rival. A CHILD'S rage can be fierce. Consider Ruby, the almost feral heroine of Kate Hamer's domestic thriller, THE DOLL FUNERAL (Melville House, $25.99), who learns on her 13th birthday that she was adopted. Ruby is helpless to do anything about the beatings she receives from the man she thought was her father, but the dramas she stages for her dolls tell the story. "My play had changed: I now arranged for them to have little accidents about the house - a trip and a tumble down the stairs, or Sindy's head stuck in the oven while Paul stood outside and watched her through the window." So it's no surprise when Ruby puts a match to her tormentor's clothes and sets a greenhouse on fire. Hamer's melodic voice hovers between the cold realism of those vicious beatings and an otherworldly mysticism that empowers Ruby to see dead people like Shadow, a young soul who longs to be alive again. But it takes a kind doctor to identify Ruby's ghosts as her ancestors. "There's no specters, or apparitions," he tells her. "The real ghosts are just family." The family she's longed for her entire life. GUTS, GORE AND A LITTLE S&M - what else would you expect from Paul Cleave, a New Zealand author who uses words like lethal weapons. A KILLER HARVEST (Atria, $26) tosses another ingredient into the mix: the fear of losing your identity. In an experimental operation, Joshua Logan, 16 years old and blind since birth, receives the eyes of his father, a detective with the Christchurch Police Department who died during the ill-timed arrest of a chain-saw killer. The operation doesn't go exactly as planned, leaving Joshua's newfound vision a bit, well, warped. Cleave follows the boy as he explores his surroundings with a sense of anxiety and awe, but for the most part he writes rough stuff. Dogs are killed, young women are kidnapped and tied up, and one unfortunate soul is chopped into pieces, then stashed in the freezer for a rainy day. And there's an inspired cliffhanger ending that promises a lot more mayhem to come. MARILYN STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 10, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The heroes of crime-fiction series have a real problem with retirement even Armand Gamache, who ought to have it nailed. He gets to retire in Three Pines, the off-the-grid Quebec village where the horrors of modernity are held mostly in abeyance (the occasional murder aside). And, yet, Gamache just can't stay off the grid permanently. Now he's agreed to become chief superintendent of the Sûreté du Quebec, the province's top cop. It's just like Gamache to jump on a sinking ship, and that's what the Sûreté looks like, with the all-powerful drug cartels seemingly in full control of the province. But Gamache has an audacious plan to change that: a rope-a-dope scheme that will either cut off the cartel monster's head or leave the chief in a jail cell. And let's not forget Three Pines, where a hooded black figure has taken up residence in the village green, just standing there, staring. The gang at the bistro is nonplussed at first, then downright panicked after the figure (or someone wearing its outfit) is found murdered in the basement of the church on the green. It's at this point that Penny's devotees must make a leap of faith: accept that weird stuff keeps happening in Canada's Brigadoon in the face of all probability, or close the damn book and call this whole Three Pines thing off. But if we did that, if we failed to see that Three Pines is a sublime metaphor for the precariousness of harmony wherever we find it, we would be forced to walk away from one of the most entrancing fictional worlds in popular literature, not to mention parting company with a lead character whom we all young or old, male or female long to be like when we grow up. No, thank you. Let's call the calling off off right now. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Penny has a permanent spot on that enviable short list of writers who combine unwavering quality with mega-sales.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Bestseller Penny's taut 13th novel featuring Chief Supt. Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec (after 2016's A Great Reckoning) opens at a murder trial in a Montreal courtroom. Judge Maureen Corriveau, who's trying her first homicide case, suspects that something is wrong with Gamache's testimony and the conduct of the Chief Crown Prosecutor. As for Gamache, who was the arresting officer in the case, he "knew perfectly well who the murderer was. He was just a little afraid that something would go wrong. And a particularly cunning killer would go free." Flash back to the recent past, when an ominous costumed figure starts to appear regularly on the green of Gamache's home town of Three Pines. The subsequent discovery by Gamache's wife of the murder victim in the local church leads to the unearthing of some disturbing, long-buried secrets that affect the entire community. The familiar, sometimes eccentric, denizens of Three Pines and Gamache's loyal investigative team help propel the plot to an exciting, high-stakes climax. Agent: Teresa Chris, Teresa Chris Literary Agency. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Penny's (The Brutal Telling) latest begins in an unusual way-after the crime and with Armand Gamache on a Montreal witness stand. Gamache, while not on trial, is at cross-purposes with the prosecution. The rest of the intricately and beautifully written novel continues with flashbacks to Three Pines and forward to the present in -Montreal. Penny uses a hilarious -Halloween costume party and an ancient legend to set the scene for murder. She succinctly examines age-old social and philosophical issues-this time the question of "conscience" takes the forefront-in every aspect, from white lies to mass murder. Robert Bathurst beautifully expresses the mood and tenor of all of Penny's characters and themes. Listeners have a treat in store through a discussion between Penny and Bathurst at the end of the last disc-don't miss it! VERDICT For devotees of the series and for those new to the magic, this 13th visit to Three Pines represents those elements most of us crave-safety, belonging, security, and friendship-despite a bit of murder and mayhem. ["Penny does not rest on her laurels with this challenging and timely book": LJ 7/17 starred review of the Minotaur: St. Martin's hc.]-Sandra C. Clariday, Cleveland, TN © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A dark, still figure, wearing long black robes and a hood, appears on the charming village green of Three Pines, a small Qubec town; though at first it seems scary but harmless, it turns out to be something much more sinister. The strange figure's appearance coincides with a Halloween party at the local bistro, attended by the usual villagers but also four out-of-town guests. They are friends from the Universit de Montral who meet for a yearly reunion at the BB in Three Pines. But this event actually happened months ago, and village resident Armand Gamache, now head of the Sret du Qubec, is recounting the story from the witness stand in a courtroom suffering from oppressive summer heat. Gamache's testimony becomes narrative, explaining how over the course of a few days the masked man grew into a fixture on the village green and morphed slowly into an omen. Gamache's son-in-law and second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, is asked to research the "dark thing's" back story after one of the BB guests, a journalist, mentions that the figure reminds him of story he did on an old Spanish tradition, that of the "debt collector." It becomes clear, as Gamache relays the events leading up to murder, that "someone in the village had done something so horrific that a Conscience had been called." But did the dark thing come for a villager or for one of their guests? Conscience is an overarching theme in Penny's latest, seeping into the courtroom narrative as Gamache grapples with an enemy much larger than the dark thing, a war he took on as the new Chief Superintendent. His victory depends on the outcome, and the path, of this murder trial. While certain installments in Penny's bestselling series take Gamache and his team to the far reaches of Qubec, others build their tension not with a chase but instead in the act of keeping stillthis is one such book. The tension has never been greater, and Gamache has sat for months waiting, and waiting, to act, with Conscience watching close by. A meticulously built mystery that follows a careful ascent toward a breaking point that will leave you breathless. It's Three Pines as you have never seen it before. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
