A Great Reckoning: A Novel (Chief Inspector Gamache Novel) by Louise Penny (Epub)

Description

When an intricate old map is found stuffed into the walls of the bistro in Three Pines, it at first seems no more than a curiosity. But the closer the villagers look, the stranger it becomes.

Given to Armand Gamache as a gift the first day of his new job, the map eventually leads him to shattering secrets. To an old friend and older adversary. It leads the former Chief of Homicide for the Sûreté du Québec to places even he is afraid to go. But must.

And there he finds four young cadets in the Sûreté academy, and a dead professor. And, with the body, a copy of the old, odd map.

Everywhere Gamache turns, he sees Amelia Choquet, one of the cadets. Tattooed and pierced. Guarded and angry. Amelia is more likely to be found on the other side of a police line-up. And yet she is in the academy. A protégée of the murdered professor.

The focus of the investigation soon turns to Gamache himself and his mysterious relationship with Amelia, and his possible involvement in the crime. The frantic search for answers takes the investigators back to Three Pines and a stained glass window with its own horrific secrets.

For both Amelia Choquet and Armand Gamache, the time has come for a great reckoning.

User’s Reviews

Review #1 New York Times Bestseller#1 Globe and Mail BestsellerNew York Times Book Review 10 Best Crime Novels of the YearThe Washington Post Best Mystery Books and Thrillers of 2016NPR’s Best Books of 2016Seattle Times 10 Best Mysteries of 2016Kirkus Reviews Best Fiction 2016Publishers Weekly Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2016Winner of the 2016 BookBrowse Fiction AwardLibraryReads “Favorite of Favorites” Top 10 Books of 2016Goodreads Best Mystery & Thriller of 2016 finalistBookPage 10 Best Mysteries and Thrillers of 2016Audible’s Best Mystery/Thriller of 2016St. Louis Post-Dispatch 5 Favorite Audiobooks of 2016BOLO Books Top Reads of 2016″Deep and grand and altogether extraordinary….Miraculous.”―The Washington Post“Artful… powerful… magical.”―The New York Times Book Review“Suspenseful.”―O, the Oprah Magazine “Superb.”―People“Transcends the mystery genre.”―AARP, The Magazine “Luminous prose, complex but uncluttered plots, and profound compassion.”―Seattle Times“Addictive.”―Charlotte Observer“Satin prose… A splendid and moving novel.”―Richmond Times Dispatch“A Great Reckoning succeeds on every level.”―St. Louis Post-Dispatch”Louise Penny [is] legendary… The magic of Penny’s books lies in the details.”―BookPage”This complex novel deals with universal themes of compassion, weakness in the face of temptation, forgiveness, and the danger of falling into despair and cynicism over apparently insurmountable evils.”―Publishers Weekly (starred and boxed)”A compelling mystery and a rich human drama in which no character is either entirely good or evil, and each is capable of inspiring empathy.”―Booklist (starred)”A chilling story that’s also filled with hope a beloved Penny trademark.”―Kirkus Reviews (starred)”Riveting…with characters of incredible depth who only add to the strength of the plot.”―Library Journal (starred)“Smart and Satisfying.”―Salisbury Post “Delivers answers to perplexing puzzles…[with] engaging characters and richly layered plot.”―Minneapolis Star TribuneAdditional Praise for Louise Penny and the Armand Gamache Mysteries“Penny sustains her high-wire act, creating characters of remarkable depth in an exhilarating whodunit.” ― People“Louise Penny is unsurpassed at building a sense of heart-stopping urgency.” ―The Charlotte Observer“Penny, who raises the bar with each entry in this superb series, has always mixed murder and corruption with issues of morality…[S]he does so with her accustomed talent for a gripping plot, rich characterizations, arresting prose and thought-provoking questions of mercy, malice and the contradictions of the human race.” ―Richmond-Times Dispatch”This series dominates best-seller lists and award lists for a reason. Penny tells powerful stories of damage and healing in the human heart, leavened with affection, humor and – thank goodness – redemption.” ―Salem Macknee, Charlotte Observer“Penny writes with grace and intelligence about complex people struggling with complex emotions. But her great gift is her uncanny ability to describe what might seem indescribable – the play of light, the sound of celestial music, a quiet sense of peace.” ―New York Times Book Review

Reviews from Amazon users, collected at the time the book is getting published on UniedVRG. It can be related to shiping or paper quality instead of the book content:

⭐ I’d give this book 10 stars if I could. Louise Penny is a wonderful writer, and I think this is her masterpiece. It is rich in character and nuance and just mesmerizing. Her novels are my catnip. I don’t so much read her books as submerge myself in them. I can’t explain how she does this except to say that she chooses her words carefully, builds a hypnotic story, and creates in the village of Three Pines a mystic place, not on any map – almost a modern-day Brigadoon.Several reviewers have noted that this is a stand alone book, and it is in the sense that there is a contained story, but I would argue that reading this book without having read at least some of the previous books is a mistake. Without the background, the echoes of meaning in this book are lost and the reading experience has to suffer. Louise Penny spends almost no time giving background material in her novels – she assumes you know. I’ve found Penny’s later books to have a strong undercurrent of sadness. In this book, where so much of the story is about memory and memories, the sadness is like a veil through which the whole narrative is seen. One of the lessons of the novel is that life hands us situations, many of which are painful but we decide how they impact our future. Much of the book explores how choices compel other choices, but also how each character has the opportunity to make a new choice, a better choice and change their lives, overcome failure and bitterness and find forgiveness. In the end this is a deeply hopeful book.Louise Penny is usually considered in the class of traditional mystery writers like P.D. James and Dorothy Sayers. This is only partly true. Her books began as traditional mysteries. Still Life, her first, is a good mystery novel with interesting characters. As time went on however and her power as a novelist grew her books changed. Though they remained in the mystery genre her books have really become studies of character in a crime setting. As a writer of character and mood there is no one to touch her in the mystery field today. It didn’t happen overnight, but today she is a superb novelist who happens to write about a policeman, Armand Gamache. I’ve read many wonderful mysteries in my life, many fine novels, but I have never read anyone in contemporary fiction with the depth and power Louise Penny brings to her best stories. Her books are luminous. Read book one: Still Life, and then read all of her other books – she will take you on a wonderful journey.

⭐ I’ve read all her previous novels and was really looking forward to reading this one especially since it had excellent reader reviews. But wow is this book boring. The story line is preposterous, drawn out, repetitive. If I read one more time how someone looked into his “intelligent eyes”, I’ll barf. I found the characters unappealing and unrealistic. Don’t even care how it ends.

⭐ I have read every one of Louise Penny’s Armand Gamache novels up to and including this one, and have always considered myself a fan. However, my enthusiasm has been waning in the last few, and even though I have the next one already purchased, which is the last one currently published, I don’t think I’ll be picking it up any time soon. Either Penny’s writing has become more formulaic or I am just wearying of her style, because I found myself almost as often annoyed as intrigued with the style. I understand dramatic tension and hinting at delicious details to be revealed later, and it can make for page-turning delight … or serve to make the reader feel “played”. I have come to love Three Pines and the characters that inhabit it, but they have ceased to be developed beyond the initial characterizations in the first few books of the series. I love the dinner parties and hanging out at Olivier’s bistro, usually the best parts of the novel, but the instances of such in this book felt like repeats of the numerous others of novels past. Each novel has one or two unexpected laugh-out-loud moment, and this one is no exception. (I am chuckling to myself as I think of Ruth and the Thanksgiving turkey.) But the sometimes fantastical plots, wild coincidences, reader manipulation and handy last-page tie-up of loose ends are becoming old. This book managed to throw in a few PC touches just to be “relevant”: a bit of racism, never explained or explored; bullying; plight of women in the last century … Except for Gamache, most positions of power (for the good, at least) are held by women, a bit of sanctimonious social engineering.

⭐ The Gamache series was nice in the beginning but then the characters got too familiar. It was easy to tell who the bad guys were in each book merely by having read previous books because had a big circle of friends that were in each book, not just his police coworkers. That is good and bad. Anyway using this formula the plots got too weird as the series went along – in the TV business they call it jumping the shark. I’m tempted to reveal plot points but you’ll see for yourself. The author’s fascination with describing food stood out as a big “whaa? why is she doing this?” Back to the familiarity issue – the author does a good job of making the books as stand-alone as they can be without having read the others. The problem is, when you’ve read the others the newer books (plots) come across … weirdly desperate? I gave this three stars based on the series jumping the shark. It started as a five star and worked its way down. If there are more books then most likely the world will be on the verge of destruction and Gamache will save it – just in time – from his little village in Canada!

⭐ I have never read a Louise Penny book I didn’t love until this one. I found the cadets’ behavior appalling and obnoxious- only to be outdone by Gamache’s bizarre response to their outbursts. I also found utterly unbelievable the story line of Leduc’s abuse of the cadets and the “hint” provided by the representative of the manufacturer. Are we really expected to believe anyone could possibly make that connection?On a positive note, Louise Penny kept me guessing about the perpetrator until the end of the novel- as usual. And her vivid descriptions of the locales were spectacular- again as always.Finally, I was so very moved by the author’s touching personal disclosure in the acknowledgement section of the book. As a caregiver to a parent who suffered with dementia, I can relate to her overwhelming personal upheaval. The fact that she was able to concentrate and write during her husband’s decline is a miracle, even with a wonderful support system. I applaud her honesty and willingness to share her personal trials with her readers and hope my review was not too unsympathetic of a wonderful accomplishment in the face of adversity.

⭐ Though the plots of the previous Inspector Gamache books have sometimes stretched credibility, (the sheer number of murders and murderers in Three Pines would make the hidden, tiny village per capita the most dangerous place on the planet, for example), they have, each of them, at least been well-thought-out plot lines with a semblance of the possible. A Great Reckoning breaks that cycle. I found myself spending more time asking how, given Gamache’s famous and illustrious career in French-speaking Canada, it could be possible the entire student body of the police academy, as well as all their parents, could be completely unaware of who Gamache is, and of his reputation for integrity and courageous honesty. It further stretched credibility that none of the academy students were aware of the infamous, disastrous raid, nor had seen the leaked videotape of the ambush which, according to all accounts in the last two or three books, enthralled and appalled the entire nation, certainly the entire province of Quebec. And why not simply expel the academy’s corrupted upperclassmen, instead of hoping Gamache’s new faculty would magically change them, with examples of honor and goodness? Why leave a corrupt, cruel dangerous man in any position at all at the school? And bring in another to join him? Gamache’s reasons are byzantine and frankly, ridiculous, even if Penny’s purpose is to bring Gamache’s own often-mentioned hubris into focus. It is also perplexing and unbelievable how suddenly, Gamache’s proteges, colleagues and even his own son-in-law (his long-time second in command) could be thrown into such doubt about his motives and integrity. I found the entire premise and plot not just thin, but that, with just a moment’s reflection, they made no sense at all. The four student character types are shallowly-formed and bordering on trite. The transparently “dragon-tattoo” cadet is certainly not an original type. Though I’m a fan of Penny’s writing and greatly admire the Gamache series, I found this book to be less well-written and far less compelling than the preceding novels in the series. Having said this, it is important to note Ms. Penny’s family was experiencing the most devastating and difficult time any family can go through, and if this one storyline, or a few characters are not as meticulously thought out and well-rounded as usual, it’s completely understandable. Indeed, when viewed with the realization the author was writing during a time of great personal pain and loss, my quibbles are meaningless, and the novel is astonishingly solid, considering. And as usual, the final few pages of the book pack an emotional wallop.

⭐ Reading one of Louise Penny’s Armand Gamache mysteries is like receiving a warm embrace from a much-loved old friend. It is comfort reading of the highest order.A Great Reckoning is the twelfth entry in the series. I’ve read them all – in order, of course. There are none of them that I haven’t enjoyed, though some naturally are better than others, but this, in my opinion, is one of the best.Armand Gamache spent years as the head of homicide in the Sûreté du Québec, and during that time, he discovered that his agency was riddled with corruption. The venality of a powerful cadre within the Sûreté had created an atmosphere of cruelty and criminality that had cost it the trust and respect of the public. Gamache made it his crusade to clean up the agency and once again make it worthy of public trust. He accomplished his goal, but it almost cost him his life.He retired from the Sûreté and he and his wife went to live in the little village of Three Pines where he healed from his wounds and where he eventually became bored and began looking for something to do.He was offered several different jobs but the one that appealed to him was that of commandant of the Sûreté’s academy. Realizing that his quest was not truly complete until the academy, too, was purged of bad actors and influences, he accepted the task, and in this book, we see him beginning that new role.His wife is happy that he will be working at the academy where she believes he will be safe. Little does she know!Gamache dismisses many of the academy’s staff and hires new instructors, but, curiously, he leaves the most brutal and corrupt professor in place. He hopes to gather enough evidence on the man to finally put him away for good and, at the same time, identify the brains behind the operation, a person he believes is someone outside the Sûreté.But soon that corrupt professor is found dead in his room, a victim of a highly staged murder. Suspicion falls initially upon some of the cadets he had brutalized, but then comes to rest on Gamache himself.Meanwhile, back in Three Pines, the villagers, including Madame Gamache, are busy sorting through desiccated newspapers, catalogs, magazines, and other papers that were stuffed into the walls of what is now the bistro as insulation a century earlier. The papers were pulled out and saved during a renovation. How this endeavor somehow connects up with events at the academy is at the heart of this story of lost innocence – the innocence of the village’s sons who marched off to war a century before and never came home and the betrayed innocence of academy cadets, some of whom seem at first glance not very innocent at all.As always with Penny’s crime novels, this is very much a character-driven story. We get to know the characters with all their flaws and humanity and they engage our emotions so completely that we feel as though we could reach out and touch them. It is the complexities of the relationships that makes it all so real and that makes the reader eager to keep turning those pages to find out what will happen next. We are involved in the plot which Penny weaves together seamlessly.And at the center of all this is Armand Gamache, surely one of the most humane and human of policemen in all of crime fiction. He understands that kindness is not weakness and that love trumps hate. At the same time, he is implacable as he pursues the evil that pollutes his beloved Sûreté and that has infected the minds of some of the cadets who are the future of the agency.Then, of course, there are all the quirky Three Pines characters that we’ve come to know and love over the years: the cranky old poet, the bookstore owner, the gay couple who own and run the bistro, the acclaimed artist, and all the rest. Even the dogs.This is a story that is full of wisdom, forgiveness, kindness, and, yes, grief. It is an absorbing read and it is with regret that one turns that last page. The warm embrace ends and one must return to the cold reality of the world and all of its frustrations and irritations.

⭐ I am so happy that this book won so many awards. It is the best book in the series, in my opinion.Armand Gamache has come out of retirement in order to be the Commander of the Academy. He is in a very difficult position when a brutal, abusive professor is murdered. As Commander, he’s at the center of the investigation but not in control. He is, surprisingly, a suspect. Gamache is working to change the philosophy of the Academy which was graduating brutal bullies into the Surete force, and, to that end, he fired many of the professors and instructors when he became Commander. He kept one especially problematic professor and his goal was to obtain enough information on this man to have him arrested thus preventing him from damaging more young, impressionable cadets but this man is the murder victim.What’s really going on is gradually revealed but it’s not clear who the murderer is until the end. There is interaction between cadets, faculty and an outsider from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police as well as Gamache, his wife and villagers from Three Pines which contributes to the complexity and richness of the story.As a parallel story, there is an old mystery involving a long lost map of the hidden village of Three Pines that is solved by four cadets with the help of the villagers.This is a dark book with past pain and life events overshadowing the tale but the theme that there is more good than evil in the world prevails. An absolutely excellent read but, as other reviewers have suggested, the story will be more enjoyable if the reader has read the previous novels.

⭐ After hearing Hillary Clinton say she’s a fan of Louise Penny, I was curious to dip into the author’s work. Seemed like a pretty good bet, given my penchant for murder mysteries (especially “cozies”), and unusual settings, like Penny’s small-town Quebec. I chose “The Great Reckoning” because it was her most recent effort. Nothing fancy about that. Usually, authors of series books are careful to fill newcomers in, so we don’t feel utterly lost. Unfortunately, that’s not the case here–and after slogging my way through this perplexing volume, Penny’s afterword gave me a sense of closure. Apparently, Penny did not write this volume in the same manner of her earlier (and, I hope, much better) novels in this series, due to a family crisis with her husband’s dementia, and her personal grief.Suddenly, the book’s rambling, even rather circular structure, made some sense, as did the bizarre repetitiousness, the references to events in previous books that were set up as “cliffhangers” here, among other frustrating oddities. And the moribund, nostalgic tone of the many hanging mysteries throughout also made sense, emotionally. But it still did not make a good read. I may give a volume early in the series a try, in a while. For now, I regret having forced myself to read this thing.

⭐ I used to enjoy this series, but this latest effort is all cream puff, old retreads and no plot. The clues, such as they are, dribble out chapter by chapter — all red herrings, it turns out. The book oozes from page to page with all the tropes the author thinks we want to hear about the now-creaky cast of cartoon characters. How many times do we need to get the finger from Ruth? The noble tolerance of Myrna? Gamache’s piercing, kind, gentle, omnicient, intelligent, searching brown eyes? The flashbacks to better books? The interminable oily transformations of Clara’s record-setting self-portrait? The perfect, homey and apparently always free meals that appear de novo to feed an empty plot? And Mrs. Gamache, is there anyone more long-suffering? who has a defter hand to insert into her hubby’s at _exactement_ the right time? or who has a more compassionate soul for lost animals, including her husband? Mais non! This is a case in which I’m sorry I read it; I won’t be reading more.

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