Catastrophic spring flooding, blistering attacks in the media, and a mysterious disappearance greet Chief Inspector Armand Gamache as he returns to the Sûreté du Québec in the latest novel by Louise Penny.
Over the past 14 years, Ms. Penny has written a saga in which both hero and author have grown in ability and assurance. A Better Man, with its mix of meteorological suspense, psychological insight and criminal pursuit, is arguably the best book yet in an outstanding, original oeuvre. We look forward to additional encounters with the dignified, inspirational Armand Gamache.
[Penny's books] straddle the tricky line between edgy and cozy, between horrifying and humorous ... Penny doesn’t deal in superficialities; no character, victim or perpetrator, is all good or all evil, once the depths are probed.
...the book promises far more than it fulfills. Another problem is that her recurring cast of eccentric supporting characters is becoming tiresome ... some...colorful, vivid prose ... Less convincing is the book’s depiction of the dead woman’s father’s headstrong attempts to kill his son-in-law, whom everyone presumes (without proof) to be the murderer. The psychology is sophomoric, and Gamache’s decision to coerce the father to stay in his own house (to protect the father from himself) is implausible. Even more implausible is an extraneous subplot about one of the recurring characters, a local artist named Clara Morrow.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
