{"id":7132,"date":"2026-10-08T07:15:28","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T14:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=7132"},"modified":"2026-10-08T07:15:28","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T14:15:28","slug":"louise-penny-miss-wolcotts-ghost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/louise-penny-miss-wolcotts-ghost\/","title":{"rendered":"Louise Penny: Miss Wolcott’s Ghost"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chief Inspector Gamache #21<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s been a while.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t a huge fan of the last two Gamache books, or of the more recent thriller co-written with Melissa Fung, but with Miss Wolcott\u2019s Ghost <\/em>Louise Penny has returned to the form that has made me a giant supporter of her work.\u00a0 I\u2019ll never forget the spell put on me by her first novel, Still Life, <\/em>and that reading rapture was gifted to me again with this book.\u00a0 When I hit the three-quarter mark, I was glued to the pages and didn\u2019t leave my chair.<\/p>\n

Readers have come to expect many things from Penny\u2019s novels \u2013 a complicated, thoughtful plot; wonderful characters; and a resolution that often leaves a lump in your throat (for this reader, in any case).\u00a0 This book does not disappoint on any of these fronts. Set again in Three Pines, the story focuses in on Gamache, Beauvoir, and another character who appears to be despised by both men.\u00a0 His story is teased out through the book, and I won\u2019t provide a spoiler.<\/p>\n

The basics: Gamache gets a panicked phone call in the middle of the night, with a caller saying merely \u201cThere\u2019s a body in Lost Nation.\u201d\u00a0 That of course is a sentence to launch a good story and it does.\u00a0 First Gamache has to find<\/em> \u201cLost Nation\u201d and when he does find it there is indeed a dead body on top of a grave, and the body has plants growing through it.<\/p>\n

The plant is as big a mystery as the body itself.\u00a0 It appears to be a plant thought to be extinct, and with great care (and the help of a botanist) Armand transplants it to his own garden. The plant and the body are linked, but it takes the majority of the novel for Gamache and his team to discover exactly how they are connected.\u00a0 Along the way the team also discovers a marine disaster \u2013 worse than that of the Titanic \u2013 occurring just two years later.\u00a0 The investigation also involves this tragedy.\u00a0 It\u2019s a real occurrence, and you\u2019ll want to look it up as you read.\u00a0 It\u2019s remarkable that it\u2019s been so forgotten.<\/p>\n

To tell much more would be to give away the delights of this plot.\u00a0 Always, the revelations are made via Gamache\u2019s conversations with suspects and other people he encounters during his investigation.\u00a0 In this way, Penny very much reminds me of the great P.D. James, though Penny\u2019s spirit is ultimately a more optimistic one than James\u2019.\u00a0 These conversations and discoveries are the heart of this deeply complex and moving novel.<\/p>\n

Penny also gifts the reader with some short visits with her series \u201cregulars\u201d \u2013 Reine-Marie, Ruth, Clara, Myrna, Gabri and Olivier, and even Rosa the duck. But for all it\u2019s breadth of storytelling this is a focused book.\u00a0 It\u2019s focused on Gamache\u2019s and Beauvoir\u2019s investigation, as well as their memories of the character despised by them both.\u00a0 This tighter focus makes the novel a very strong entry in this series, perhaps one of my favorites to date.\u00a0 —\u00a0Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chief Inspector Gamache #21 It\u2019s been a while.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t a huge fan of the last two Gamache books, or of the more recent thriller co-written with Melissa Fung, but with Miss Wolcott\u2019s Ghost Louise Penny has returned to the form that has made me a giant supporter of her work.\u00a0 I\u2019ll never forget the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2553,1868,184,2552,100,2551,1276],"class_list":["post-7132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-extinct-plant","tag-inspector-gamache","tag-louise-penny","tag-marine-disaster","tag-minotaur-books","tag-miss-wolcotts-ghost","tag-robin-agnew"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7134,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7132\/revisions\/7134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}