HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN
By Louise Penny
Minotaur, 2013
Americans
often stereotype Canadians as bland, dispassionate, humorless. But we are so
wrong. Our neighbors to the north have lent us some of the most entertaining
people on earth: William Shatner, Sandra Oh, Diana Krall, Margaret Atwood, Jim
Carrey and the incomparable Leonard Cohen who gave voice to the Northern
Lights. Another mystical Canadian voice was added with the publication of
Louise Penny’s first mystery Still Life
in 2005. Winner of numerous awards, she is the only author to have won the Agatha, one of the mystery world’s most
prestigious awards, five times.
Penny’s
books are set in the fictional Quebec village of Three Pines, so untouched by
the world it has no Internet or cell phone service and appears on no printed
map or GPS. A great story-telling talent is bringing evil to this snowbound
Eden while still making the reader want to live there. Though Three Pines by
now must have the highest per capita murder rate in Canada, even the
possibility of such an idyllic place may have set off a real state boom in
Quebec’s Eastern Townships.
No
one can read a book set in Three Pines without wanting to stay at the bed and
breakfast run by Gabri and Olivier, the gay couple who also own the local
bistro; or to visit the bookstore of Myrna Landers, the burnt-out
psychotherapist who landed in Three Pines by getting lost and found the perfect
place to stay; or to have dinner with Clara Morrow, the oddest of artists, who
may or may not be the sweet woman she appears to be; or to walk in the woods with
Gilles, the former lumberjack who talks to trees; or, best of all, to eat exquisite
French food in the bistro while listening to crazy Ruth. Penny’s best
laugh-out-loud lines are said by or about one of greatest characters ever
created by any author – the irascible, obscenity spewing, poetic genius Ruth
Zardo, and her pet duck Rosa. Penny’s characters are easily embraced and not
easily forgotten.
Penny’s
latest work, How the Light Gets In
(the title is taken from Leonard Cohen’s Anthem,
“there is a crack in everything / that’s how the light gets in”) finds her kind,
insightful and usually unarmed detective, Sûreté du Québec’s Chief Inspector of
homicide Armand Gamache, beset by departmental infighting. His archenemy, Sûreté
head Sylvain Francoeur, seems determined to destroy Gamache even if it means
destroying the homicide division along with him. Gamache’s long-time right-hand
man and almost son-in-law, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, has chosen addiction over
friendship and deserted his mentor for Francoeur’s ready supply of pills. Gamache’s
only allies within the Sûreté are his immediate superior, Thérèse Brunel and
her computer hacker husband; his new assistant, Inspector Isabelle Lacoste; and
possibly the very strange Agent Yvette Nichol.
Gamache
returns to Three Pines at the behest of Myrna, whose friend and former client,
Constance Pineault, left Three Pines planning to return for Christmas and
disappeared. Gamache and Lacoste find the elderly woman brutally murdered in
her home in Montreal. We soon learn Constance was the last surviving Ouellet
quintuplet, children whose birth had created a media sensation during the
Depression. Research into the Ouellets unearths a sordid history of official
and family lies, greed and perhaps something even darker.
Meanwhile
the Ouellet inquiry gives Gamache the cover he needs to remain in Three Pines,
away from Sûreté scrutiny, while he probes the subversive conspiracy he
believes Francoeur is leading. But Gamache has no concrete evidence of any plot
and no idea of the alleged conspirators’ target. His obsessive accusations, his
estrangement from Beauvoir and his recent insistence on carrying a weapon at
all times have his friends concerned for his sanity, leaving him with fewer
people to rely on.
Penny’s
writing style and the characters she draws are not subtle. She makes us see
what she wants us to see. Every mystery writer delves into human evil and every
reader with even a passing grasp of history knows there is no limit to human
capacity for evil. Penny’s mysteries acknowledge the evil but go on to question
the limits of love and forgiveness. How
the Light Gets In takes us to the outer limits of emotion and makes us
wonder if perhaps there should be limits to love.
The
only possible downside to Penny’s books is that you can’t part with them. You
have to keep a few always on your shelf so that in some future dark time in
your life you can return to Three Pines and be saved.
