A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books, August 2016)- In 40 words or less: Penny’s twelfth novel featuring Armand Gamache is much more than a mystery. In the twilight of his career, Gamache wants to leave a legacy. Strength of character, forgiveness, and the importance of community are at the heart of A Great Reckoning.
- Genre: Mystery
- Locale: Quebec
- Time: Contemporary
- Read this for a well-constructed mystery and so much more – to meet people you’d like to know, in a place you’d like to call home.
I’ve always been a mystery fan. There was a period I spent more time with Nancy Drew than my neighborhood friends. In recent years there has been only one mystery writer that I’d drop anything to read. Louise Penny.
A Great Reckoning is a beautiful book with a specifically moral point of view. Penny’s main character, Commander Armand Gamache, has left his position after decades as head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec. He and his wife have settled in Three Pines, an idyllic community virtually off the grid and not on any map. Save for the occasional murder, Three Pines is perfect – oddball neighbors, a B&B, cafe and a bookstore – but Gamache is not ready to retire.
Faced with a variety of career options, he decides to head up the Sûreté’s academy, the residential training facility for all cadets. Gamache was instrumental in rooting out major corruption within the Sûreté, facing serious injury in the process. Before retiring he wants to alter what he sees as a corrosive training climate that creates divisive elements from the start.
Just before he takes up this new position, a map appears in Three Pines, apparently dating back about one hundred years. Hand drawn, it bears a resemblance to the local area with some unusual additions. Gamache brings it with him to the academy, giving copies to several of the cadets in the hope they will work together to explain its symbols.
And, of course, there is a murder. In this case, one of the academy’s professors is killed after the building has been secured for the night. Gamache took the appointment with concerns about the ethics of some of the staff and even brought a discredited former colleague to serve as an example. There is no shortage of suspects.
Penny is her element when she takes Gamache’s students to Three Pines. As a reader, I couldn’t wait to see what would happen when they met the locals. The portrait of local life, modelled on the community in which Louise Penny and her husband live, could easily carry a novel without the addition of a mystery.
Sense of place is vital in all of the Three Pines mysteries. In A Great Reckoning, both the academy and Three Pines are intentional communities. Cell phones, the internet, and unexpected visitors play very specific and controlled roles. In Penny’s novels, human interaction, individual histories, and human frailties are key.
I’m never one to include “spoilers” in a review. But I will tell you that Armand Gamache’s personality and outlook are in large measure based on Louise Penny’s husband, the former head of hematology at the Children’s Hospital in Montreal. Sadly, he has been in failing health for several years. Having heard Penny speak at Book Expo last May in Chicago, both her husband and Gamache are strong, smart and well-loved.
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