Random Thoughts, Or, Murder on a C-Note

Cinco de Mayo

The big holiday will be here in a few days, but I'm not thinking of the Mexican celebration. Instead, I'm clearing the decks to be ready to read Kate Atkinson's A God in Ruins, the followup to her Life After Life (Reagan Arthur Books, 2013). I still think about Life After Life, the story of the repeating lives of Ursula Todd in 20th-century England.

A God in Ruins (Little, Brown and Company, May 5, 2015) tells the story of her younger brother, Teddy, who was an RAF pilot during World War II and never expected to survive the war. What will the 20th century have in store for him? I plan to find out as soon as possible.

I sure won't be waiting until December 15 for Christopher Fowler's Bryant & May and the Burning Man, the 12th in the Peculiar Crimes Unit series. It was published last month in the UK by Doubleday, but I am going to be patient enough to wait until May 7, when the audiobook comes available in the US on Audible. The narrator, Tim Goodman, is so wonderful, I prefer the audiobook versions of the series anyway, so I suppose it's a happy oddity that the audiobook is available in the US more than seven months before the print edition.


The Cormoran Strike series

Remember back in 2013 when it was revealed that Robert Galbraith, the pseudonymous author of The Cuckoo's Calling, was none other than J. K. Rowling? Since then, we've had a sequel in that Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott series, The Silkworm, which I thought was at least as good as the first. I was just talking with some mystery-reading friends the other day about when we might see another book in the series, and that got me to researching . . . .

I learned that the third book in the series will be called Career of Evil and will be coming out sometime this autumn. Yippee! Though, judging from her last book, I would have thought there is no mystery that Rowling sees the publishing business as the career of evil.

I also learned that the BBC plans to dramatize the series, which is terrific news. I've been enjoying the Grantchester series, originally produced by Britain's ITV and shown on PBS this last season––even though, frankly, I'm not a big fan of the Grantchester books. If ITV could make such an excellent series from those books, I'm hoping BBC will do even better with the superior material of the Cormoran Strike books.


O, Canada

The Old Mansion House, Georgeville, Québec

I look forward every year to a new Armand Gamache/Three Pines book from Louise Penny. One comes every August, like clockwork, but it always seems like such a long wait in between. If you feel the same way, you might want to check out this site, which is currently running a series about the real places that inspired locations in the books. It's a lot of fun to read about the real inspirations, like the very un-scary-looking pink house that nevertheless inspired the creepy Hadley House in Still Life.

Louise Penny's monthly newsletter is always an entertaining read too. It's almost like getting a letter from a friend. You can sign up to read her newsletters here. One bit of recent news from her is her husband's recent Alzheimer's diagnosis. She writes with such affecting openness about how this has affected their lives.


Cozies

My brother-in-law, Jeff, enjoys traditional mysteries and is a big-time completist when it comes to series. Once he starts a series, if he likes the first book, he plows through the entire series, usually without a break.

Jeff was the one who first told me about Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher series years ago, and that's now up to 20 books. I think I told him about Rhys Bowen's Her Royal Spyness cozies, about the impoverished Lady Georgiana Rannoch, who is 30-somethingth in line for the throne of England. That reminded him of another Englishwoman, Daisy Dalrymple, who decides to make her own living as a journalist rather than rely on her Viscount father.

Daisy's connections to the members of the upper crust allow her to access the kinds of places that are closed to working-class types like police detectives. St. Martin's publishes attractive paperbacks of the series, and seems to be starting over at the beginning. The first book, Death at Wentwater Court, was just republished in March.


What makes a good spy novel?

I was on a real run with C-initialed topics, but I can't resist adding one of these things that's not like the others. "What makes a good spy novel?" is the question recently asked of Olen Steinhauer in The New York Times. As a voracious reader of espionage novels, I was taken by his response:

Depends on the reader. For me, it’s the moral muddiness of the ends/means equation that comes up more often in spy fiction than in, say, murder mysteries. The best espionage stories not only ask questions about how spying is performed, but they also question the value of the job itself. And when the profession becomes a metaphor for living, the spy novel can delve into the very questions of existence, while thrilling the reader with a convoluted plot. Do all that well, and you’ve got a potential classic on your hands.

I'd say that quote is a particularly apt description of Steinhauer's newest novel, All the Old Knives (Minotaur Books, March 2015).

What's the Point? Crossbow Murders

Have you ever noticed that when something unusual comes to your attention, it suddenly seems to pop up everywhere? During a recent show on the 2500-year-old tomb of Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang, the narrator mentioned that the invention of the crossbow was likely an important factor in his bloody unification of China in the 5th century BCE. Apparently, crossbows provide a more stable aiming platform and a stronger pull with less effort than traditional bows. This enabled men of lesser skill and strength to become competent archers. Nearly a thousand clay bowmen are among the massive army of terracotta warriors protecting this first emperor of China for eternity.

To me, crossbows are particularly horrible weapons, much more terrifying than knives or even guns, and the thought of someone being killed with one makes my fingernails curl. Perhaps because I was nearly struck by one many years ago, on a fog-shrouded South Carolina beach. That peculiar thwock sound and the still-quivering bolt two feet in front of my face have featured in several Fellini-esque nightmares over the years since. The shooter couldn't possibly have even seen the target he was aiming at in the dense fog. My outraged yell earned a gruff "Sorry," and I dimly saw the backs of two teenage boys leaving the beach at a dead run.

A crossbow bolt fired from within a limousine into the neck of the driver marks the first of a bizarre string of murders in Indulgence in Death, the 31st entry in J. D. Robb's Eve Dallas series. The book opens with a heartwarming chapter of Eve and her mysterious billionaire husband, Roarke, visiting his extended family in the Irish countryside before getting down to the serious business of the serial murders back home in New York. Each murder is performed with a different exotic instrument, all requiring some skill to operate. It gradually becomes clear that the end target of this nasty game will be Eve herself.

Somehow, these police procedurals laced with mild erotica and some weak sci-fi elements always leave me faintly underwhelmed. The author has developed a formula that works well for her, but it varies very little from book to book. Still, she churns out two Eve Dallas books a year in addition to those she writes as Nora Roberts, so some shortcuts are obviously necessary. These books makes for quick light reading.

Moving from theater snacks to a five-course meal, the first mystery in Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Gamache series, Still Life, is still a delight after two previous readings. Her books are as much character studies as mysteries, most set in a charmingly improbable location. Jane Neal, retired teacher in the Canadian village of Three Pines, had witnessed three teenage boys in ski masks throwing dung at the bistro owned by Olivier and his partner Gabri and screaming "Fags, Queers." She scolded them by name, causing them to run away. Then Jane, who has never shown her work to anyone, finally offers one of her paintings for a local show. A few mornings later, she is found in the woods––killed by an arrow through the heart.

Gamache and his team are called to the remote village––not on any map––to investigate. The book offers an interesting, if slightly unsettling, discussion of arrowheads designed for competition versus those for hunting, and the wound patterns left by each. Penny's books are excellent to reread, because even absent the suspense of that first reading, there is a great deal of thought-provoking content to linger over and enjoy.

The murder of a police detective in a posh convalescent center for injured police officers opens Watching the Dark, the twentieth in Peter Robinson's Alan Banks series. DI Bill Quinn, strolling around the grounds, is shot through the heart with an arrow from a crossbow. DCI Alan Banks is called to investigate, and among the victim's effects he finds pictures of the victim in compromising positions with a girl who has been missing for six years. DI Quinn had handled the investigation, never solved, into her disappearance.

The Professional Standards Unit is alerted, and they assign DI Joanna Passero to Banks's team to investigate the possibility of corruption on the part of the late DI Quinn. When the case requires Banks to travel to Estonia, much to his disgust he is accompanied by the humorless Passero while Annie Cabot, Banks's usual partner, handles the UK end of the case. While far from the best in the series, this is still a very good mystery, if a little heavy on the travelogue. I enjoy DCI Banks more when he works closer to home, with his own team around him.

Am I alone in my horror of crossbows? Knives, guns, even pitchforks, all make very effective  and fatal weapons in mystery novels without my batting an eyelash. But a crossbow introduced into the story immediately sharpens my attention. What particular murder weapon or weapons makes your hair stand on end?

Review of Louise Penny's The Long Way Home

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny

The Long Way Home (Minotaur Books, August 26, 2014) is Louise Penny's tenth Armand Gamache/Three Pines novel and, at this point, regular readers can mentally categorize them. No, it's not that they fit neatly into slots, but along a continuum, where some are weighted more toward the crime-solving end, and others more toward the examination of the soul. The Long Way Home, like The Beautiful Mystery, for example, is one of the latter.

After all the intensity and heart-thumping tension and action of the last novel, How the Light Gets In, everyone's due for a little recovery and reflection. And that's just what the newly-retired Armand Gamache is doing, now living with Reine-Marie and the German shepherd, Henri, in a cottage on the green in Three Pines.

Gamache has a lot to process, and every morning he sits on a bench on a hillside looking down at the town, reading a slim, leather-bound book. But, each morning, he begins at the beginning and stops at a bookmark before the end. Longtime readers of the series will suspect where that book came from and why Gamache doesn't move on past the bookmark.

Gamache's contemplation and retirement are interrupted when Clara Morrow asks for his help. Clara and her husband, Peter, fellow artists, had reached a crisis in their marriage the previous year. They agreed that Peter would leave, but return to their home in Three Pines exactly one year later, to see if their marriage could be saved. But Peter is now weeks late in returning, and Clara has no idea where he is or if he is well.

The bonds of friendship compel Gamache to help Clara, teaming up with her, Clara's friend, Myrna, and Gamache's longtime protégé, Jean-Guy Beauvoir. They track Peter along what seems to be a kind of quest, maybe a search for the mythical Tenth Muse, but something that will purge the artistic jealousy that has poisoned his soul and his marriage.

The trail finally leads to the Charlevoix region, a place of powerful, but sometimes savage beauty, along the St. Lawrence river, east of Québec City. And what the searchers find will change them all. (By the way, this is another Louise Penny book that makes me think the Canadian tourism bureau should be paying her. She makes me want to visit every place she describes, and right away.)

I'm making the book sound like it's ultra-serious, but of course it isn't. This is Louise Penny, after all. That means foul-mouthed Ruth and her one-note cursing duck, Rosa. It means a lot of affectionate ribbing, as here:

"Ergo, he painted them on his return to Canada," said Clara.
"Ergo?" asked Myrna.
"Don't tell me you've never wanted to use it," said Clara.
"Not now that I hear how it really sounds."

C'est encore Charlevoix, by Gerard Lapointe

So, yes, along with the serious business of tracking down Peter and dealing with some deep emotional damage, we have the usual pleasure of spending time with the people of Three Pines, who by now seem so real that it's hard for me to believe I can't just drive a few hours to southern Québec, just over the Vermont border, and drop into the Bistro in time to have a glass of wine and some of Mr. Béliveau's cheese with them all.

This feels like a transitional novel; one that moves Gamache into a new kind of life. So far, Jean-Guy is still part of it, which is good news for longtime readers. Maybe in future books we'll get to see much more of Reine-Marie, something I think many of us have long hoped for.

Note: Thanks to the publisher for providing an advance reviewing copy of the book. Versions of this review may appear on Amazon, Goodreads, BookLikes and other reviewing sites under my usernames there.

The Envelope, Please: Forecasting the 2014 Best Novel Edgar

I can't resist making some predictions for the Edgar Awards, presented each spring by the Mystery Writers of America, even though my forecasting abilities are nil. I've been wrong in my Super Bowl betting for years and that's when I've had a 50-50 shot at picking right. D'oh! For the Edgars, I might as well roll the dice or pick a name out of a hat. In fact, I'll do that too.

I invite you to make predictions any way you choose and to share them with us in the comments section beneath this post. As we all know, opinions about books and ranking them are subjective enterprises and the Edgars judging panels are as human as we are. (As far as I can tell, Edgar-nominee Matt Haig has planted no extraterrestrials on the Edgar panel.) We'll find out how well we agreed with the judges this Thursday, May 1, when the winners are announced at the MWA banquet.

Without further ado, I'll show you the nominees for Best Novel and tell you what they're about:

Sandrine's Case by Thomas H. Cook (Grove Atlantic/Mysterious Press)
The Humans by Matt Haig (Simon & Schuster)
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger (Simon & Schuster/Atria Books)
How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)
Standing in Another Man's Grave by Ian Rankin (Hachette/Reagan Arthur Books)
Until She Comes Home by Lori Roy (Penguin Group (USA)/Dutton Books)

When Sandrine's Case opens, Sam Madison, an unlikable Coburn College professor, is on trial for murdering his enigmatic wife, Sandrine. Between chapters of trial proceedings, Sam, who narrates, mulls over their relationship.

The Humans, by Matt Haig, details a visit to Earth by an extraterrestrial from Vonnadoria after Cambridge mathematician Andrew Martin scared that planet's extra-intelligent inhabitants by solving the Riemann hypothesis. The Vonnadorian's undercover mission is to take Martin's place and get rid of any evidence the hypothesis was solved.

In Kent Krueger's standalone, Ordinary Grace, its middle-aged narrator, Frank Drum, looks back at 1961 in New Bremen, Minnesota, when he was the 13-year-old son of a Methodist minister. That summer, a series of deaths rocked the community and his family and ushered Frank into the world of adults.

How the Light Gets In, featuring Armand Gamache, Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, is the ninth in Louise Penny's popular series. It finds Gamache investigating a Three Pines disappearance against the backdrop of Sûreté infighting and corruption. Sister Mary Murderous reviewed it here.

Retired Edinburgh cop John Rebus is working as a civilian in the Serious Crime Review Unit of the Lothian and Borders Police in Ian Rankin's Standing in Another Man's Grave. After he fields a call from a mother convinced that her missing teenage daughter is one of a series of disappearances, Rebus dusts himself off and muscles his way into an active Edinburgh CID investigation. (See my review here.)

It's 1958 in Lori Roy's gothic-tinged suspense Until She Comes Home and Alder Avenue, a working-class Detroit neighborhood, is undergoing steady decline. Residents are frightened when a black prostitute is murdered near the local factory but the police ignore the death. It's the later disappearance of Elizabeth, a mentally disabled white girl, that galvanizes Alder Avenue.

Prediction:

I'll try to give you my thinking without divulging book spoilers.

Matt Haig

There were moments in reading Haig's The Humans when I laughed aloud at the Vonnadorian's confusion over customs we take for granted. At other times, my heart swelled with his joyful discoveries. Despite the book's lapse near the end into something akin to Hallmark card philosophizing I enjoyed its amusing and sentimental look at what makes us human. I think the Edgars are much like the Oscars, though. It's rare for a humorous nominee to win the big enchilada and I don't see an exception for The Humans looming on the horizon.

Ian Rankin

When Rankin retired Rebus in 2007's Exit Music, I was afraid we'd lost him forever. I read Standing in Another Man's Grave with a sense of relief and excitement. Rankin puts ol' Rebus under the searchlight here and we see anew how this man is a poor fit for the modern metropolitan police force. The force has changed since his retirement, but Rebus hasn't. He can't stick to assigned duties or stop smoking and drinking and he has no interest in learning how to use high tech investigation tools. He'll always have the fattest file in the Complaints department. Thank God. I don't think I could take a reformed Rebus. Rankin's plotting purred along as usual without any signs of rust. This is a good book and deserves its nomination. Because it's not Rankin's best, I don't pick it for the Edgar.

Lori Roy

Lori Roy is interested in the pain that accompanies social change. I liked her Bent Road, which won the 2012 Best First Novel by an American, and I liked Until She Comes Home, too. Roy does a great job of capturing 1950s Detroit, the lives of housewives and their working husbands, the shuttering factories, open and hidden racism and fear of what the future will bring. She looks at what motivates a person to commit a crime and how that crime drops like a rock into a neighborhood pond, sending mud and trash to the surface and creating ever-growing ripples of irrevocable change. Her writing is lyrical and she made me think. Yet, I don't think this is her year.

Thomas H. Cook

Thomas H. Cook dazzled me with Sandrine's Case. It's an intricate and unpredictable courtroom thriller with Sam facing the death penalty and I found myself going back and forth about whether he actually murdered Sandrine. His arrogant self-centeredness made me recall that awful Teddy Bickleigh from Francis Iles's Malice Aforethought, and we know how guilty he was. In addition to the legal jousting, Sandrine's Case is a gripping examination of a marriage, à la A.S.A. Harrison's The Silent Wife. I didn't care whether this exact marriage exists in the real world. What Cook captures very well is the growing awareness and animosity between a long-married couple when they can't figure each other out, they can't get through to each other and they no longer remember what motivated them to marry in the first place. During the trial, Sam slowly strips off his skin for us and we can see his heart and brain. He begins to understand his much more talented and attractive wife, Sandrine. It's amazing how a dead woman comes to vivid life. We ultimately cotton on to each of them, their marriage and Sandrine's death.

Louise Penny

I won't start a Louise Penny book unless I'm in a comfy chair with some milk and cookies handy because it's all part of the guaranteed-to-be-good Three Pines experience. There's such a sense of coming home while reading this series, with each book building seamlessly from the last, with a continuing cast of characters and themes of corruption and threats of reorganization interweaving with threads of the current investigation. How the Light Gets In is one of Sister Mary's favorites in the Three Pines series and it's one of mine too, a joy to read.

William Kent Krueger

William Kent Krueger is best known for his excellent Cork O'Connor series and he stretched for the powerful look at faith and redemption in Ordinary Grace, a nonseries book. It's obvious he knows the '60s, his Minnesota setting and the sort of people who lived there very well. His plot is deliberately paced and straightforward, even though it rolls out through the memories of a man looking back at his youth; interesting in this Edgars competition because another nominee, Thomas H. Cook, has used this device to good effect in some of his books, such as The Chatham School Affair and Breakheart Hill. Krueger's plot didn't surprise me but there are paragraphs of such strength and beauty that I had to stop so I could read them again.

I won't be surprised by the Edgar going to Cook for his clever and surprising courtroom drama, although if I were an Edgar judge I'd vote for Penny. She has written one excellent book after another leading to the fix her protagonist finds himself in in How the Light Gets In, but I think it will go to Krueger. Ordinary Grace seems like a Best Novel Edgar winner, the literary equivalent of Oscar-winning movies such as Ordinary People and Chariots of Fire.

Title drawn out of a hat: Lori Roy's Until She Comes Home. I'll laugh if this title wins the Edgar because I'll be able to claim I picked it to win.

I'll be back later this week to pick the Edgar winner for Best First Novel by an American.

Note: The nominees for Edgar Awards were all published in 2013. Other categories for the 2014 Awards are Best Paperback Original; Mary Higgins Clark Award, for the book most closely written in the Mary Higgins Clark Tradition according to guidelines set forth by Mary Higgins Clark; Best Fact Crime; Best Critical/Biographical; Best Short Story; Best Juvenile; Best Young Adult; and Best TV Episode. Special Edgars this year include the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award, for the best first mystery or suspense short story; the Grand Master Award; and the Raven, for non-writers who contribute to the mystery genre. For a complete list of 2014 nominees and the data base of previous years' nominees and winners, see the Edgars website here.

Bits 'n' Bobs

 Well, it's finally here. After two years of looking and six months of schlepping ourselves back and forth several times a month, we are actually moving next week. Forty years of our own stuff, as well as boxes and boxes of family memorabilia, some never examined and sorted, will be wending their way to a little town in south-central Pennsylvania. Amish and Mennonite farm country, but not quite as rural as you might think, although the nearest Trader Joe's grocery store is 65 long miles away.

I've been thinking recently of a news story from years ago. Relations with China had loosened a bit, and a pair of Chinese women doctors had come to deliver a series of lectures in the US. A reporter accompanied them to a mall to get their impressions of the bounteous choices America had to offer. After wandering bewildered from store to store for a couple of hours one of them, proud of her mastery of English vernacular, asked wonderingly "Why would anyone need so much stuff?" I've been asking myself the same question quite urgently, but actually already know the answer. In every family some member, intentionally or accidentally, becomes the keeper of the stuff and the stories. In our families, both my husband and I are those members. I'm too busy and distracted right now to actually sit down to read and review a novel, but here are a few snippets I hope may amuse you.

The Unusual Investigations of Dr. Yao has been on my e-reader for ages, and browsing through the titles one day I opened it. What a treat! It is a most charmingly mistranslated (accidentally, I thought at first, but am not so sure now) collection of short stories about a Ming Dynasty Chinese doctor who solves crimes through his keen powers of observation and logic. The book was apparently translated first from Mandarin Chinese to German, then from German to English by Ludger Gausepohl. The slightly clumsy language might be exasperating for some readers, but if you are as delighted as I am with word play of all sorts, you may find yourself enchanted with these well-traveled tales.

Yao's first assignment was as court physician to the ladies of the royal household. He "visited several times a week in the morning, the royal ladies. Those led often a rather monotonous life, and very rarely had the favor to be together with his heavenly majesty or to perform other obligations."  When one of the ladies, who is pregnant––presumably by the emperor––is poisoned, she loses the child. Shortly after, she is poisoned again, this time fatally. If you can tolerate or even enjoy awkward passages like this one, these stories are decent puzzles and a lot of fun.

There is some interesting news for Louise Penny fans drumming their fingernails impatiently waiting for her latest release. Her publisher is sponsoring a community re-read of the series in virtual Three Pines, the setting of most of the stories in her prize-winning novels, starting on April 21st. The author will sometimes be present, and there will be discussions, giveaways, and guest posts; all in preparation for the release of her latest mystery, The Long Way Home (Macmillan, August 26, 2014.) Two weeks will be devoted to each of the nine already-released books in the series, culminating in a discussion of the new release. After each session, participants will be invited to adjourn to Oliver's Bistro (Alas, also virtual, so BYOB) for drinks and croissants by the crackling fire. If interested, you can sign up here: Re-read Gamache Sign Up. My paper copies of the books are all packed up in the 1800 pounds of boxes already shipped (OK, I'm officially embarrassed; bibliophiles should never move.) But isn't that just a perfect excuse to buy them for my e-reader? Now if they would only get cracking on that television series based on the Gamache books, I'd really be happy!

Most modern inks contain high levels of volatile organic compounds and heavy metals, making them very unfriendly to the environment. Typographer Collin Willems has designed a typeface he calls Ecofont, which can significantly reduce the amount of ink used in the printing industry and make it more sustainable as well as more eco-friendly. I find the larger typefaces a bit Broadway, but don't even notice it in the smaller sizes. What do you think?

I hope to find time to read something new to share over the next couple of weeks, if I can unearth my To Be Read pile quickly enough. Meanwhile, enjoy this lovely spring that has finally made an appearance––and here are a few moving tips I've gleaned from the pros.

Review of Louise Penny's How the Light Gets In

How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny

It may be summer for us, but it's December in Québec as How the Light Gets In begins. The story in this ninth in the Armand Gamache/Three Pines series picks up shortly after the predecessor book, The Beautiful Mystery, ended, and things are just as grim as you would imagine for Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, if you read that book.

Gamache's longtime enemies at the Sûrété du Québec are circling like sharks, taking bites out of his Homicide team. All of his team members have been moved to other departments, except for Isabelle Lacoste, and the officers moved to his team in their place are slackers, insubordinate and obviously playing for Gamache's saturnine enemy, Chief Superintendent Francoeur.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir, Gamache's second-in-command and closest colleague to both him and Lacoste, is now with Francoeur. Jean-Guy is a mess. Hooked on painkillers again, completely alienated from Gamache and broken up with Gamache's daughter Annie. Of course, all of this has been orchestrated by Francoeur and his compatriots. The sharks have isolated their prey and are coming in for the kill.

The Dionne Quintuplets

Considering what his office has become, it's almost a relief to Gamache when Myrna Landers, Three Pines's flamboyant bookseller, asks for his help to find a missing friend. This seemingly simple case unexpectedly becomes a last chapter in the story of Québec's most famous baby boomers, the first quintuplets to survive their birth. This part of the plot is obviously based on the Dionne quintuplets, whom the baby boomers among us will remember very well.

The Sûrété corruption plot that we've been following for this entire series takes center stage in this book, and it's a nail-biter that puts all of the characters under make-or-break stress. For those who have been wondering about the reach of the corruption and the long-term goals of its principals, this will be a particularly satisfying read.

What does this have to do with the book? Read it and find out.

Penny uses the corruption plot not just for thrills, though, but as a return to one of her perennial themes, good and evil. I remember back in A Trick of the Light, the seventh book in the series, there was a passage explaining the difference between Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir. Gamache always believed there was good in people, but Beauvoir was the opposite. Beauvoir believed that at bottom, you would always find evil, "without borders, without brakes, without limit."

Now Gamache, at his moment of crisis, wonders if Beauvoir was right, that maybe evil has no limits. He knows that it will be hard to find the impetus for the corruption, because most likely, it "started as something small, invisible to the naked eye. It was often years, decades, old. A slight that rankled and grew and infected the host." And now the infection is overwhelming.

Nathaniel Parker as Armand Gamache in the upcoming film of Still Life

Penny always manages to explore the themes of good and evil, love and hate, and sin and redemption without sounding preachy, because she does it through her particular strength, the character study. After reading all the books, and then going back and listening to the whole series on audio, I've come to know the characters as real people, with histories, strengths and flaws. I know their homes and how they live. Louise Penny writes so that there is no distance between the reader and the characters; their thoughts and emotions, what they eat and drink, how they interact with each other and, most important, how they react when bad things happen.

Penny is such a keen observer that it's all too easy to believe that you can travel to Three Pines, sit down at the Bistro and join in the conversation with all these characters, walk the green with them and watch the village children playing hockey, sit in Clara's messy house and enjoy a meal, browse for books at Myrna's bookshop and head upstairs to sit around the wood stove with a cup of tea and a scone. Hmm, there sure is a lot of eating and drinking that goes on in Three Pines––not that there's anything wrong with that! But there's more to it than that. Penny can also use a small moment to evoke poignant emotion, as when she has Gamache pick up a book at a murder scene, flip it open to the bookmarked page and see what the victim would now never read.

Louise Penny has transformed the police procedural and village mystery genres into not a mash-up, but something unique, original and genuine. Every summer, I look forward to my next visit with these characters, and at the end of the book I regret that my visit was all too short. I hope you'll visit too.

Note: How the Light Gets In will be published on August 27 by St. Martin's Minotaur. I received a free review copy of the book.