The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny

I’ve been captivated by the writing of Louise Penny and her characters, but I’ve been reading her books out of sequence, and I missed the third novel in her series about Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. The Cruelest Month filled in the necessary back story that is helpful in terms of reading the later books. There have been frequent references to the trouble that the Chief Inspector caused his employer, the Surete du Quebec, and as a result, the troubles that came to him. It was the Arnot case, when Gamache brought down the powerful and corrupt Superintendent of the Surete, Pierre Arnot. Arnot’s reach from prison back into the Surete that he had once run was still powerful. The Arnot matter is fully explained in this book. Penny presented a fascinating story regarding the agents of Arnot (if you could figure out who they were) while coupling that with a new and bizarre murder mystery in Three Pines, the magical village just outside of Montreal. Gamache’s family is assaulted by misinformation given to the press by someone who has inside information about the Chief Inspector, and when his children get villainous publicity because of him, it nearly kills Gamache. In this book, regarding both the attacks on Gamache and the murder of Madeleine Favreau, Penny writes skillfully about the destructive pathology of jealousy. My captivation by Penny continues. I will read the rest of the books in sequence, as I advise you to do. Start with Still Live. This is excellent fiction writing.

The above review was written 9 years ago, and now I've listened to this book in audiobook form. My opinions about the quality of the work is unchanged. In the original review, I should have emphasized the theme of what it's like to be second best whether that is in a specific competition, whether it is losing a loved one to someone else, whether is being less popular than another, or whether it's being less talented or successful. Penny takes on that them from multiple perspectives and gives examples of the extreme ways we humans react to such things. What a treat it has been to experience this book a second time.