EXCELLENT MYSTERY AND THRILLER ( )

Book 11 Another excellent story.KIRKUS REVIEWIn Inspector Gamache?s 11th outing, the sheltering forest around his small village of Three Pines is revealed to be a hiding place for unexpected evil.Armand Gamache, former head of homicide at the S?ret? du Qu?bec, is learning to let go and be happy with his new life in Three Pines, far from the evil that ate away at him for years. His former colleagues and friends poke fun at him, saying the great inspector will never truly hang up his hat, but these jokes turn deadly serious when an imaginative 9-year-old boy named Laurent is murdered shortly after telling what seemed to be a tall tale about a massive gun wielded by a monster in the woods. When it?s discovered that the boy was not exaggerating even in the slightest, Gamache?s mind quickly switches back to questioning his surroundings and the people who inhabit this space�many of them his close friends. Chief Inspector Isabelle Lacoste and her right hand, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, take up residence in Three Pines, and with Gamache?s sideline help, they begin to find out what sort of darkness lurks just outside of town. Penny uses her well-known, idyllic setting as the center point of a mystery with global scope and consequences, spanning decades and implicating many, including series veterans. What makes this story most magical, though, is how the many aspects of this spiraling tale can be connected by a Bible verse and related lines from a Yeats poem: ?And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?? It?s with this eye for detail that Penny sketches the ?nature of the beast?¥evil that has the potential to grow even in the most unexpected places. An especially terrifying character returning from Gamache?s past is the perfect reminder of the dark side of human nature, but that side does not always win out.Penny is an expert at pulling away the surface of her characters to expose their deeper¥and often ugly¥layers, always doing so with a direct but compassionate hand.

(2015) This one of the Inspector Gamache series I probably enjoyed the most. A fast based thriller about a super-gun found near Three Pines and why it was built and the threat it posed to the US. Throw in a war criminal masquerading as a draft dodger living amongst the town and his son murdered because he found the gun. Great stuff. Gamache still retired but helping out LaCoste and Beavoir, well done.Email this reviewKIRKUS REVIEWIn Inspector Gamache's 11th outing, the sheltering forest around his small village of Three Pines is revealed to be a hiding place for unexpected evil.Armand Gamache, former head of homicide at the S?ret? du Qu?bec, is learning to let go and be happy with his new life in Three Pines, far from the evil that ate away at him for years. His former colleagues and friends poke fun at him, saying the great inspector will never truly hang up his hat, but these jokes turn deadly serious when an imaginative 9-year-old boy named Laurent is murdered shortly after telling what seemed to be a tall tale about a massive gun wielded by a monster in the woods. When it's discovered that the boy was not exaggerating even in the slightest, Gamache's mind quickly switches back to questioning his surroundings and the people who inhabit this space�many of them his close friends. Chief Inspector Isabelle Lacoste and her right hand, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, take up residence in Three Pines, and with Gamache's sideline help, they begin to find out what sort of darkness lurks just outside of town. Penny uses her well-known, idyllic setting as the center point of a mystery with global scope and consequences, spanning decades and implicating many, including series veterans. What makes this story most magical, though, is how the many aspects of this spiraling tale can be connected by a Bible verse and related lines from a Yeats poem: ?And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?? It's with this eye for detail that Penny sketches the ?nature of the beast?¥evil that has the potential to grow even in the most unexpected places. An especially terrifying character returning from Gamache's past is the perfect reminder of the dark side of human nature, but that side does not always win out.Penny is an expert at pulling away the surface of her characters to expose their deeper¥and often ugly¥layers, always doing so with a direct but compassionate hand. Pub Date: Aug. 25th, 2015ISBN: 978-1-250-02208-0Page count: 384ppPublisher: MinotaurReview Posted Online: July 6th, 2015Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15th, 2015

My least favorite of the series - not enough Three Pines. ( )

This is the 11 book in the Armand Gamache series. After I read The Long Way Home, I wasn't sure if I was going to read anymore of this series, but decided to give it another try. This was a much more enjoyable book than The Long Way Home, but It still went on too long for my taste. I was giving it a solid five stars in my mind, until about 80% of the way through, and then realized that it wasn't nearly finished yet. I should mention that I listened to the book on audiobook, so I don't always realize where I am in the story. I mentally threw my arms in the air, and thought, "No, not again!" The convoluted ending brought the book down to 4 stars in my estimation. The good thing about this book is that is solidly set in Three Pines and all our favourite characters are there. We learn a bit more about a few of them, especially Ruth. The mystery is a good one, but by combining other seemingly unrelated elements in the story, it seemed to take away from the tension and the tightness of the plot. I learned way more about a serial killer that Gamache helped put away than I needed to. He really was not needed as a pawn used to ramp up the tension in the story. All the things going on in Gamache's head could have been abbreviated as well as most of his thoughts were occupied totally with this serial killer. He kept so much to himself that he hindered more than aided the investigation which Isabelle Lacoste was in charge of, which was the murder and of a nine-year-old boy from the village. Gamache is supposedly retired and living in Three Pines with his wife, Reine-Marie. As it turned out, Isabelle was the one who solved the murder case before Gamache, and she did this by simply following the evidence, and ignoring all the other major occurrences going on around the village. Gamache led Jean-Guy around the mulberry bush a few times and almost made a totally disastrous and unforgivable mistake while tilting at his own windmills. I will read the next in the series. I keep hoping there will be a real "meat and potatoes" murder without the distraction of outside political dealings or global disasters. ( )