How the Light Gets In

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.