Conscience Comes Calling
In
Louise Penny’s bestselling Armand Gamache series, the Canadian village of Three
Pines, outside Montreal seems like heaven on earth. The tiny village that does
not even appear on most maps, is where Chief Superintendent of the Surete du
Quebec, comes home for warmth and peace after the chaos of his days dealing
with crime in the city.
His
loving wife Reine-Marie, his friends, his daughter and son-in-law, have the
village’s charming bistro sun by Gabri and Olivier at the centre of their lives
in Three Pines. In the thirteen book of the series, Glass Houses, one Halloween night, when they have guess from
Montreal, a dark, hooded figure appears on the village green. It just stands
there, doing nothing, but the tranquility of the village is shattered.
Everybody expects top cop Gamache to do something, but since no crime has been
committed he is unable to get rid of the spooky character.
One
of the guests, a journalist, recalls a story he did on an old Spanish tradition,
of the cobrador or “debt collector” who is hired to just follow a debtor or
stare at him, so that he is scared into paying up. Gamache’s son-in-law and
second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir does some research and finds the story of
the origins of the cobrador, which was like a conscience calling out not a
financial but a moral debt. Gamache realizes that “someone in the village had
done something so horrific that a Conscience had been called.”
Then
a murder is committed, the cobrador vanishes, and Armand Gamache is called upon
to testify in court. Oddly enough, the prosecuting lawyer, Barry Zalmanowitz
grills his own witness so vicously, that the judge Mauteen Corriveau suspects
that there is something more to it that meets the eye, and she is right.
Gamache’s career and several lives are at stake, and the
outcome of the case is crucial to a plan the Chief Superintendent, Beauvoir,
and their Surete colleagues have been working on secretly for months, to fight
the drug trade in Canada.
The suspense builds up as slowly as the heat in the courtroom becomes
stifling. The case tests the nerve and loyalty of everyone in Gamache’s circle,
and they all rally around wonderfully.
Conscience, duty, and love of family and friends are always underlining
these books about Armand Gamache and Three Pines. Glass
Houses is one of Loiuse Penny’s finest. It is difficult for the reader to
step out of beautiful village when the story (with its terrific climax) comes
to an end.
Glass Houses
By Louise Penny
Published by: Hachette
Pages: 391
No comments:
Post a Comment