Police

This novel, the eighth in Penny’s award winning and beloved Armand Gamache series, is yet another variation on the golden age form she uses as a template.  This one is basically a classic locked room mystery, though it’s so much more, as are all of Penny’s novels.  Set not in Three Pines but in the obscure and remote monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-des-Loups (literally “Among the Wolves”), the victim is a monk, and the only two officers on site are Gamache and Beauvoir.

This is a beautifully constructed book, the form following the theme.  The monks of this obscure monastery are world renowned for their beautiful rendering of Gregorian chants, thanks to a recent CD that achieved wide distribution and acclaim.  Gregorian chants are sung to a very set and specific set of rules, and are simple and repetitive, the singing and listening both a form of mediation and prayer. read more

“…You have to suck at it for years until one day your experience pays off and you reach a point where you know what you’re doing.” “It’s like everything else, then, isn’t it?”

I was a big fan of the first book Minotaur published by Ed Lin, Snakes Can’t Run, and I enjoyed this one maybe even a little bit more.  Lin’s central character, Robert Chow, is a Chinese American Cop in New York City’s Chinatown circa 1976 (Carter and Ford are battling it out for the presidency).    Robert has a good backstory—he’s a Vietnam Vet, he was a drunk but is now sober, and he is now feeling his way through his job, hoping for a detective’s gold shield as well as trying to figure out  his relationship with his girlfriend, Lonnie. read more

It’s hardly necessary to write a review of a Louise Penny book – if you’re a devotee, you’re going to pick this book up no matter what I say – but as all her novels are of a piece but still stand separate from each other, at least in terms of tone, they are well worth discussing individually. She wrapped up one thread with her last masterful novel, Bury Your Dead, and she’s changed tone somewhat and taken a new direction with this novel. Bury Your Dead was an intense, deep novel that wrapped up some emotional threads in a bravura manner. This new novel is a bit less intense but still has plenty to say. read more

“She could smell it in the pillow as she pulled it closer. On the sheets as she rolled over in the darkness and searched out cool spots that were not there. Murder Season. She was floating, drifting. Cruising through an open seam between sleep and consciousness.”

If there is a writer to resemble, it might be a good idea to resemble Michael Connelly. It is no disrespect to say that Robert Ellis’ tightly plotted police procedurals set in LA and featuring homicide detective Lena Gamble resemble Connelly’s Harrry Bosch novels. However, the gender change up makes the whole enterprise fresh. Ellis happily also shares Connelly’s sharp plotting and ability to give the reader a twist that has been fairly laid out for the reader, yet is still a surprise. read more

There are so many serial killer novels, so little time.  There are so many that I gave up reading them long ago, and yet – when I come across one that seems to have a different twist, I can’t help but pick it up.  I’ve read a couple others in the past few years that offered a twist – A Curtain Falls, by Stefanie Pintoff, which used a historical perspective; and Children of the Street by Kwei Quartey, which seemed to be (and was) a commentary on the street children of Accra, Ghana, but turned out also to be a twisty serial killer story.  R.J. Ellory’s joins that company, though his book is the most traditional of the three. read more