A World of Curiosities, (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #18), Louise Penny author; Robert Bathurst, narrator
Is there anyone who would not like to step into the imaginary world of Louise Penny’s Three Pines, at least for one day? It is a place that seems idyllic, even when a crisis occurs. It is a place and group of people that accepts all sorts of odd and quirky residents with love and loyalty. Their weather is as diverse as the people, and one can always count on excitement from the lives of those involved with Inspector Armand Gamache.
In this latest book, I was not disappointed. My “friends” were all there, ready to work together as a team to help each other when the mystery developed. The book began with Armand Gamache reminiscing about his life as the town prepared to celebrate the graduation of Fiona, (she and her brother were orphaned when their drug addicted, prostitute mother, Clotilde Arsenault, was murdered), and the award of a scholarship to Myrna’s somewhat introverted and skittish niece, Harriet. The fly in the ointment is that Fiona Arsenault murdered her mother and her brother Sam, who is perceived to be a psychopath by the Inspector, like a famous serial killer in his past. As they become more intertwined in the lives of those in Three Pines, through their connection with Jean-Guy Beauvois and Inspector Armand Gamache, when Sam suddenly comes to Three Pines for Fiona’s graduation, Armand’s radar picks up dangerous vibes. When Harriet takes a shine to Sam, it makes him wonder if she is safe with him. Is he imagining trouble?
As the Montreal Massacre is remembered by Gamache, Armand also recalls the day he met Jean-Guy, an insolent, angry, young man that he brought into the Surete as an investigator, who then married his daughter and became the father of his grandchildren! Agent Beauvois and Inspector Gamache now work very closely together. He instinctively recognizes and accepts those that suffer from loss and hardship because of his own past that was riddled with pain when his parents were killed in an automobile accident by a drunk driver. He has also mentored Amelia Choquet, a loose-lipped, nose-ringed, tattooed young women with pink hair. Armand was only a little boy when his parents died, and he identifies with those who have also suffered loss. He met Jean-Guy as he began the investigation of Clotilde’s murder.
After the festivities of the day’s events, Fiona, now an engineer, mentions that she believes that there is a hidden space, unused, above the bookstore. It seems that Myrna wants to move away to a place with more space for her niece to visit more comfortably, now that she and Bill are living together, and this space, if opened up, might provide a better solution for all those who would miss Myrna and Bill. They discover that a letter was forwarded to Bill, supposedly sent to him, that described a stonemason’s experience with building that wall, the wall that hid a supposed secret room. When they break through the wall, they discover a copy of a very famous, and very large painting by an unknown artist, called The Paston Treasure. The painting represents artifacts that existed in a cabinet in the mid 1600’s, but in this copy, overlaid and dispersed throughout, there are items of the current day, like an airplane and a digital watch. Who painted this one? Why was it walled up in this hidden room? How did it even get into the room? As the number of clues grow with each person’s connection to the painted overlays, the mystery and the danger coming, grows more apparent to Gamache. He begins to wonder about a serial killer he captured and put away for life. When he finds out that this killer is not in prison, but someone impersonating him is, he knows that there is something really sinister occurring and he begins to investigate further. He learns that art therapy is used in prisons to reform prisoners. Does it work? The twists and turns and odd connections of people become better known to him, and his fear grows.
The book refers to a real painting and a very real massacre that occurred at the Polytechnique Institute. Otherwise, the story is fiction. The characters and themes are very creatively knitted together. What at first seems to be separate ingredients like those in a cake before they are mixed together, becomes a perfectly baked cake in the end, when all of the questions that are raised during the investigations are answered.
The book is read superbly by the narrator who uses just the right amount of stress and tone for each character, but the inclusion of “woke”, progressive issues, for no real reason that was apparent to me. It was disappointing that someone with such a successful series of novels would succumb to include such unnecessary information, seemingly just to fit in with the current mob of progressives, and it was distracting.