There are but few Canadian mystery novels series. The most famous is the Three Pines / Chief Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny. Set in Quebec, the Inspector Gamache series is a whodunit style mystery novel. It is almost but not quite a cozy.
The sidebar of local colour revolves around Gamache’s home in the somewhat mysterious village of Three Pines, its many eccentrics, as well as references to Quebec culture and a sometimes flawed sense of the local language (i.e. the swear is spelled tabarnac not tabernac and it is Douleur not Doleur).
The Great Reckoning is an okay mystery novel by Louise Penny. It is a too long for its own good, a common thing in a Louise Penny mystery, and the solve of the murder is convoluted and not that satisfactory.
Chief Inspector Gamache left the Surete du Quebec after uncovering high level corruption. He is more or less happily retired in Three Pines. He is convinced to return to the Surete as head of its police academy. His idea is to effect change from within and from the first days of an agent’s life.
Gamache staffs the professorial team and includes two of the men who were part of the corruption he uncovered. The idea is to “keep your enemies closer”. He also chooses the cadets and makes an especially strange choice by admitting street waif Amelia Choquet.
Eventually there is a murder at the academy. This could or should have been the main story. Instead, Canadian mystery novelist Louise Penny chooses to lead The Great Reckoning with a treasure hunt. A hundred year old map was found within the walls of the local bistro. Chief Inspector Gamache orders four cadets, including the mysterious Amelia Choquet, to discover what the map leads to.
Too much time is spent on the cadets’ treasure hunt. If it was meant as a character building exercise, Louise Penny fails to reveal how the students have been changed by the quest. The reveal of the purpose of the map is banal and almost an afterthought. This solve is almost little more than a cute narrative trick. As a metaphor for finding something, it also fails.
A Great Reckoning is the twelfth Chief Inspector Gamache mystery by Louise Penny. Based on this one, I am willing to give Chief Inspector Gamache, Three Pines, and Louise Penny another go but will buy the next one in a used book shop so as not to invest too much in the series.
A Great Reckoning
An Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery
Louise Penny
Minotaur Books 2016
402 pages
Related posts
- Canadian mystery novelist Louise Penny and her Inspector Gamache series set in Three Pines, Quebec is a matter of taste. It is a very successful series but after reading three of these mystery novels I fail to be impressed. My constant peeve with the Three Pines series is the story…
- Standing in the Shadows is the 28th and final Inspector Banks novel by the late Peter Robinson. This is an enjoyable police procedural. As it contains spoilers to previous novels, I would not use it to introduce a new reader to the series. Peter Robinson’s Standing in the Shadows is…
- Depending on the genre of the novel in hand, Kate Kessler is one of 6 noms de plume of this Canadian-born author. Call of Vultures is her second Killian Delaney thriller. Although it's predecessor carries some of the backstory, Call of Vultures can stand alone. The fierce fighter Killian Delaney…
- Look What You Made Me Do is a captivating, original, and thrilling novel of suspense. Canadian author Elaine Murphy has come up with characters you have not met yet. The situations will either keep you up at night because you can’t put this thriller down or because every creak you…
- The Blackbird is the third of four Donald E. Westlake aka Richard Stark where heist driver and full-time actor Alan Grofield appears independently. The events in The Blackbird follow those in The Damsel and The Dame as well as the Parker thriller The Handle. You do not have to have…