Introduction

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A December 2018 Indie Next Pick
One of Kirkus Reviews' Best of 2018 Picks
BookPage Best of the Year 2018
A LibraryReads Pick for November 2018
A LibraryReads Hall of Fame Winner
Washington Post's 10 Books to Read This November
One of PopSugar’s Best Fall Books to Curl Up With

“A captivating, wintry whodunit.” ?PEOPLE

"A constantly surprising series that deepens and darkens as it evolves." ?Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

“A spellbinder . . . another outstanding Gamache adventure… ingenious . . . what more could a mystery reader – or any reader for that matter – want?”?Maureen Corrigan, Washington Post

The new Chief Inspector Gamache novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author.

When a peculiar letter arrives inviting Armand Gamache to an abandoned farmhouse, the former head of the Sûreté du Québec discovers that a complete stranger has named him one of the executors of her will. Still on suspension, and frankly curious, Gamache accepts and soon learns that the other two executors are Myrna Landers, the bookseller from Three Pines, and a young builder.

None of them had ever met the elderly woman.

The will is so odd and includes bequests that are so wildly unlikely that Gamache and the others suspect the woman must have been delusional. But what if, Gamache begins to ask himself, she was perfectly sane?

When a body is found, the terms of the bizarre will suddenly seem less peculiar and far more menacing.

But it isn’t the only menace Gamache is facing.

The investigation into what happened six months ago?the events that led to his suspension?has dragged on, into the dead of winter. And while most of the opioids he allowed to slip through his hands, in order to bring down the cartels, have been retrieved, there is one devastating exception.

Enough narcotic to kill thousands has disappeared into inner city Montreal. With the deadly drug about to hit the streets, Gamache races for answers.

As he uses increasingly audacious, even desperate, measures to retrieve the drug, Armand Gamache begins to see his own blind spots. And the terrible things hiding there.

Editorial Review

An Amazon Best Book of December 2018: Thrillers are mostly populated with damaged crusaders, loose cannons, or lone wolves fighting crime single-handedly. Like literary Jenga, Louise Penny removes most of these testosterone-drenched tropes without sacrificing the high stakes that propel a thriller forward. In Kingdom of the Blind Chief Inspector Gamache is on the ropes professionally as a shipment of opioids that escaped him in an earlier book makes its way to the streets of Montreal. Heads will roll, and Gamache’s is top of the list, with pressure being applied to his son-in-law and second-in-command Jean-Guy to work the guillotine. Meanwhile back in Three Pines, Gamache, Myrna, and a neighboring man are informed that they’ve been named executors to the estate of a woman who had given herself the delusionary title of Baroness. It’s quizzical until it turns deadly and a beneficiary is found dead in the woman’s decrepit house. Reading Penny’s deceptively loose plots, the reader gets distracted by the priest-like Gamache marshaling his flock, personal and professional, attuned to any strays he may need to take under his protective wing. It isn’t until Penny pulls the final string that the plot goes taut, the smoke and mirrors fall away, Gamache’s true gameplan is revealed, and the evil that was hiding in the blind spots is exposed in this dark, slow-burning, and masterful thriller. --Vannessa Cronin

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