First, a personal word. I haven’t posted here in a long time because of a combination of work stress followed by a traumatic family loss. I’m going to do my best to start posting regularly again, beginning with resurrecting my Sunday reviews.
I have been a Louise Penny fan since the beginning of the Armand Gamache series. In the last few years, however, I’ve begun to approach Penny’s books with a pinch of dread. Will this be one I love? Or will she return to the type of plot line I’ve grown weary of?
I think it’s very difficult to be a writer of mysteries, particularly if you set your novels in a small town or village. Would anyone in their right mind want to live in the same village as Miss Marple? That’s like asking to be murdered. Eventually, the series of terrible crimes in such a contained location begins to seem absurd. At which point, the author has to embrace the whimsy (Midsomer Murders, anyone?) or find an alternate story line.
The early Gamache novels centered on Three Pines, a charming fictional village that time forgot, home to a set of wonderfully lovable and eccentric characters. Eventually, however, Gamache was promoted to too high a position for it to be believable that he would investigate killings in such a relatively unimportant place. That’s when the books began to feature the “Gamache uncovers a massive conspiracy” plot lines. And that’s when I began to find the books increasingly less enjoyable.
I still read them because I love Gamache, his family, and circle of friends. Some of the conspiracy novels have managed to engage me almost as much as the village cozy novels. Alas, The Grey Wolf, the latest installment, was not one of them.
Very little of the story was set in Three Pines. I miss Clara, with paint in her hair; Gabri and Olivier, the odd couple who run the bistro; wise Myrna Landers who owns the bookstore; and cantankerous poet Ruth with the pet duck who swears. And I’m weary of widespread sinister plots that threaten Quebec.
The other problem with The Grey Wolf is that it is so convoluted. Gamache and his second-in-command Jean-Guy Beauvoir return to the isolated monastery that was the setting for The Beautiful Mystery and then travel to one of the remotest points of Quebec, while Isabelle LaCoste (Gamache’s other second-in-command—illogical but just accept it) travels to the fortress monastery of Grand Chartreuse in France. Despite the slight problem that neither lay people nor women are allowed within its walls. The Sureté detectives are searching desperately for clues to stop a terrible crime of domestic terrorism from happening, even though they aren’t sure at first exactly what the crime will be.
The plot is difficult to follow—I got so confused that I stopped in the middle to reread The Beautiful Mystery, which wasn’t much help so I don’t recommend following my example. And the story drags. For only the second time, I gave a Louise Penny novel only three stars.
The last time I did that was for book 16. The next two were 5-star reads for me. The Grey Wolf was book 19.
I really hope Penny can find a way to balance the sweeping plots she seems drawn to now with the loving closeups of eccentric humanity that made many of us fall in love with her books. I’ll read her next book before deciding if I want to continue. There are too many other books to continue a series I no longer enjoy simply out of loyalty.
Ruth Hull Chatlien 