★ 06/14/2021
Might a post-Covid Canada value individual lives less? That provocative question’s at the heart of bestseller Penny’s brilliant 17th whodunit featuring Sûreté du Québec Chief Insp. Armand Gamache (after 2020’s All the Devils Are Here). Gamache, who has been devastated to learn that nursing homes were abandoned during the pandemic, leaving the vulnerable residents to die alone, is discomfited to be asked to provide security for a lecture by a controversial figure, statistician Abigail Robinson. After analyzing the pandemic’s social and economic fallout for the Canadian government, Robinson concluded that the health care system and the economy would be in good shape, if only the elderly and infirm were euthanized so everyone else could have adequate resources. The government disclaimed her findings, but her views have proven disturbingly popular among a segment of the population. Gamache saves Robinson from an assassin’s bullet at the talk, but a related murder in his home village of Three Pines follows. Seamlessly integrating debates about scientific experimentation and morality into a fair-play puzzle, Penny excels at placing her characters in challenging ethical quandaries. This author just goes from strength to strength. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company. (Aug.)
Praise for The Madness of Crowds
“This series has always excelled... This new novel grapples successfully with the moral weight of its narrative… ‘All Will Be Well’ never sounded so menacing.”
—The New York Times Book Review
"Intelligent and emotionally powerful.”
—Wall Street Journal
“The best mysteries and thrillers rise to the level of social novels, presenting readers opportunities to confront the difficult issues we face. Penny’s novels have always been driven by this (as well as the love of family and friends). The Madness of Crowds may be one of Penny’s darkest works, but we can still find comfort in the natural beauty of Three Pines and the quirky residents we would love to have as our neighbors.”
—Washington Post
“Timely and thrilling… faithful readers know that one of Penny’s books is less a single-serving crime tale than a full spread of fiction. The mystery may be the main course, but the side dishes — the food for thought, and the food at the Bistro; the people and their lives and, yes, loves; and certainly the setting itself — combine to create a full banquet for readers, one liberally seasoned with dry humor. The Madness of Crowds is one of the richest and most satisfying banquets yet.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“The mystery part of the books is always compelling and provides narrative drive, but Penny’s books are so rich because she provides real food for thought and gives those thoughts emotional grounding… another brilliant entry.”
—Mystery Scene Magazine
“Louise Penny, who in her seventeenth installment in the beloved Armand Gamache series, has tackled COVID and its consequences head-on. The book describes how everyday life in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines has changed while also exploring the threat of a statistician who is using the pandemic data as ammunition for a eugenics program. Plus one for the Canadians.”
—CrimeReads
“Penny’s optimism about the future shines brightly through Gamache’s family and Three Pines, and hopefully will shine into your heart as well.”
—BookTrib
“It’s easily one of the best mystery novels (or novels of any genre) in recent memory.”
—BookPage (Starred Review)
“Provocative… brilliant… Seamlessly integrating debates about scientific experimentation and morality into a fair-play puzzle, Penny excels at placing her characters in challenging ethical quandaries. This author just goes from strength to strength.”
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“Always a master plotter, Penny brilliantly combines this main story line with a profusion of subplots that bring together multiple interconnected themes, all raising thought-provoking questions about ethics and human relationships in a post-COVID world. Gamache's longtime belief in our common humanity is severely tested here, but, finally, it is that belief and the actions deriving from it that seem to offer the only balm for our lingering bruises.”
—Booklist (Starred Review)
“This book has layers within layers: good versus evil; our duty to the weak; the nature of power; the fact that good people are not always likable, and likable people are not always good. Highly recommended...”
—Library Journal (Starred Review)
“With The Madness of Crowds, [Penny] is one of the first crime fiction authors to tackle the pandemic and its aftermath head-on and in doing so becomes almost a literary Oracle at Delphi, mapping out both the rewards and the pitfalls facing society after such an unprecedented and seismic pandemic. In the end, The Madness of Crowds stands as one of the best novels in Louise Penny’s excellent, and now iconic, series.”
—BOLO Books
★ 12/01/2021
When Armand Gamache is asked to provide security for a local university event, he's baffled. Why would a lecture by a visiting statistician—in English, no less—need additional security? Then he looks into what Abigail Robinson will be discussing and discovers the dangerous, repugnant theories she espouses. And when someone shoots at her during the lecture and a friend of hers is murdered soon after, Gamache investigates, along with his second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir. Penny sets her latest series installment (following All the Devils Are Here) after the COVID pandemic, asking hard questions about the duty of care society owes its most vulnerable members. A seemingly random subplot—Reine-Marie Gamache taking on the task of sorting through the papers of a recently deceased elderly woman and trying to figure out why the woman compulsively drew monkeys—ends up providing an important connection. Robert Bathurst continues to provide exceptional narration, with strong characterizations for main and secondary characters alike, including vocalizations for poet Ruth Zardo's pet duck. VERDICT An essential purchase for libraries.—Stephanie Klose, Library Journal
★ 07/02/2021
Penny's 17th entry in the "Chief Inspector Gamache" series (after All the Devils Are Here) finds the Gamache family in the Québec village of Three Pines during the Christmas holidays. The threat of COVID-19 has subsided, and the villagers may gather again. Many of the village windows still display children's drawings with the words "Ça va bien aller" ("All will be well"). That phrase was used as comfort during the pandemic but now it has been co-opted by statistician Abigail Robinson, who uses data to prove that better times may come, but that there will be a price. Inspector Gamache must protect Professor Robinson during her lecture, which is attended by an unstable crowd. An incident at the lecture pulls Gamache into the world of this controversial academic. As the conflict moves to Three Pines, the tension escalates, resulting in crimes that seem impossible to untangle. VERDICT This book has layers within layers: good versus evil; our duty to the weak; the nature of power; the fact that good people are not always likable, and likable people are not always good. Penny's familiar characters are back, along with some intriguing visitors. The mystery will keep readers absorbed until the end and might make them realize how this unprecedented pandemic has changed the world. Highly recommended for public libraries.—Terry Lucas, Shelter Island P.L., NY
2021-11-02
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and the village of Three Pines, Québec, emerge from the pandemic to confront something in its way even more monstrous.
It’s not clear entirely how the invitation was extended, but Colette Roberge, Chancellor of the Université de l’Estrie, is hosting her old friend professor Abigail Robinson, of the University of Western Canada, for a talk on statistics. That sounds dry until Gamache realizes that the numbers Robinson is crunching concern the benefits that would accrue around the world if the powers that be launched a wholesale campaign of mercy killing that targeted the old, the sick, and the helpless. The subject is guaranteed to polarize audiences violently even as the endorsements Robinson is seeking from politicians and other influencers approach a tipping point at which her radical ideas might seem reasonable, even tenable. The capacity crowd crammed into an old gym to hear the talk is already rowdy when someone sets off a string of firecrackers and someone fires a gun, narrowly missing the speaker. The inevitable murder that follows on the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve strikes painful chords in everyone from young Sudanese activist Haniya Daoud, whose sufferings have left her filled with rage and disdain for the human race, to Gamache’s sidekick and son-in-law, Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir, who’s coping with his complicated feelings toward his baby daughter, Idola, who was born with Down sSyndrome, to thoracic surgeon Vincent Gilbert, the Asshole Saint hiding a dark secret that portends all the other secrets Gamache must toil to uncover and determine which of them is responsible for this post-pandemic nightmare.
No one balances tight plotting, compassion for her flawed characters, and a broader vision of humanity like Penny.
