A Great Reckoning: A Novel (Chief Inspector Gamache Novel, 12) Paperback – May 2, 2017

I'd give this book 10 stars if I could. Louise Penny is a wonderful writer, and I think this is her masterpiece. It is rich in character and nuance and just mesmerizing. Her novels are my catnip. I don't so much read her books as submerge myself in them. I can't explain how she does this except to say that she chooses her words carefully, builds a hypnotic story, and creates in the village of Three Pines a mystic place, not on any map - almost a modern-day Brigadoon.Several reviewers have noted that this is a stand alone book, and it is in the sense that there is a contained story, but I would argue that reading this book without having read at least some of the previous books is a mistake. Without the background, the echoes of meaning in this book are lost and the reading experience has to suffer. Louise Penny spends almost no time giving background material in her novels - she assumes you know. I've found Penny's later books to have a strong undercurrent of sadness. In this book, where so much of the story is about memory and memories, the sadness is like a veil through which the whole narrative is seen. One of the lessons of the novel is that life hands us situations, many of which are painful but we decide how they impact our future. Much of the book explores how choices compel other choices, but also how each character has the opportunity to make a new choice, a better choice and change their lives, overcome failure and bitterness and find forgiveness. In the end this is a deeply hopeful book.Louise Penny is usually considered in the class of traditional mystery writers like P.D. James and Dorothy Sayers. This is only partly true. Her books began as traditional mysteries. Still Life, her first, is a good mystery novel with interesting characters. As time went on however and her power as a novelist grew her books changed. Though they remained in the mystery genre her books have really become studies of character in a crime setting. As a writer of character and mood there is no one to touch her in the mystery field today. It didn't happen overnight, but today she is a superb novelist who happens to write about a policeman, Armand Gamache. I've read many wonderful mysteries in my life, many fine novels, but I have never read anyone in contemporary fiction with the depth and power Louise Penny brings to her best stories. Her books are luminous. Read book one: Still Life, and then read all of her other books - she will take you on a wonderful journey.

I've read all her previous novels and was really looking forward to reading this one especially since it had excellent reader reviews. But wow is this book boring. The story line is preposterous, drawn out, repetitive. If I read one more time how someone looked into his "intelligent eyes", I'll barf. I found the characters unappealing and unrealistic. Don't even care how it ends.

I have never read a Louise Penny book I didn't love until this one. I found the cadets' behavior appalling and obnoxious- only to be outdone by Gamache's bizarre response to their outbursts. I also found utterly unbelievable the story line of Leduc's abuse of the cadets and the "hint" provided by the representative of the manufacturer. Are we really expected to believe anyone could possibly make that connection?On a positive note, Louise Penny kept me guessing about the perpetrator until the end of the novel- as usual. And her vivid descriptions of the locales were spectacular- again as always.Finally, I was so very moved by the author's touching personal disclosure in the acknowledgement section of the book. As a caregiver to a parent who suffered with dementia, I can relate to her overwhelming personal upheaval. The fact that she was able to concentrate and write during her husband's decline is a miracle, even with a wonderful support system. I applaud her honesty and willingness to share her personal trials with her readers and hope my review was not too unsympathetic of a wonderful accomplishment in the face of adversity.

Reading one of Louise Penny's Armand Gamache mysteries is like receiving a warm embrace from a much-loved old friend. It is comfort reading of the highest order.A Great Reckoning is the twelfth entry in the series. I've read them all - in order, of course. There are none of them that I haven't enjoyed, though some naturally are better than others, but this, in my opinion, is one of the best.Armand Gamache spent years as the head of homicide in the Sûreté du Québec, and during that time, he discovered that his agency was riddled with corruption. The venality of a powerful cadre within the Sûreté had created an atmosphere of cruelty and criminality that had cost it the trust and respect of the public. Gamache made it his crusade to clean up the agency and once again make it worthy of public trust. He accomplished his goal, but it almost cost him his life.He retired from the Sûreté and he and his wife went to live in the little village of Three Pines where he healed from his wounds and where he eventually became bored and began looking for something to do.He was offered several different jobs but the one that appealed to him was that of commandant of the Sûreté's academy. Realizing that his quest was not truly complete until the academy, too, was purged of bad actors and influences, he accepted the task, and in this book, we see him beginning that new role.His wife is happy that he will be working at the academy where she believes he will be safe. Little does she know!Gamache dismisses many of the academy's staff and hires new instructors, but, curiously, he leaves the most brutal and corrupt professor in place. He hopes to gather enough evidence on the man to finally put him away for good and, at the same time, identify the brains behind the operation, a person he believes is someone outside the Sûreté.But soon that corrupt professor is found dead in his room, a victim of a highly staged murder. Suspicion falls initially upon some of the cadets he had brutalized, but then comes to rest on Gamache himself.Meanwhile, back in Three Pines, the villagers, including Madame Gamache, are busy sorting through desiccated newspapers, catalogs, magazines, and other papers that were stuffed into the walls of what is now the bistro as insulation a century earlier. The papers were pulled out and saved during a renovation. How this endeavor somehow connects up with events at the academy is at the heart of this story of lost innocence - the innocence of the village's sons who marched off to war a century before and never came home and the betrayed innocence of academy cadets, some of whom seem at first glance not very innocent at all.As always with Penny's crime novels, this is very much a character-driven story. We get to know the characters with all their flaws and humanity and they engage our emotions so completely that we feel as though we could reach out and touch them. It is the complexities of the relationships that makes it all so real and that makes the reader eager to keep turning those pages to find out what will happen next. We are involved in the plot which Penny weaves together seamlessly.And at the center of all this is Armand Gamache, surely one of the most humane and human of policemen in all of crime fiction. He understands that kindness is not weakness and that love trumps hate. At the same time, he is implacable as he pursues the evil that pollutes his beloved Sûreté and that has infected the minds of some of the cadets who are the future of the agency.Then, of course, there are all the quirky Three Pines characters that we've come to know and love over the years: the cranky old poet, the bookstore owner, the gay couple who own and run the bistro, the acclaimed artist, and all the rest. Even the dogs.This is a story that is full of wisdom, forgiveness, kindness, and, yes, grief. It is an absorbing read and it is with regret that one turns that last page. The warm embrace ends and one must return to the cold reality of the world and all of its frustrations and irritations.

When I first opened this book I thought I would soon be putting it down again as the staccato style of writing with 3 word 'sentences' infuriated. But I don't like to give up, so I carried on and soon couldn't put it down. Maybe bits of the plot were somewhat far-fetched but it all held together very well, with innumerable unexpected twists, a long list of possible suspects and an emphasis throughout on the essential goodness of human nature, rather than on the very present evil. The style modified, the plot thickened and I was hooked and will definitely be searching out more books in this series about Armand Gamache. Maybe it would have helped to read the books in sequence as others have suggested but the story did stand alone and I look forward to exploring the history of some of these characters in greater depth, as revealed in the earlier books in the series.

Armand Gamache is in an interesting position when there's a murder at the Academy. As Commander, he's at the centre of the investigation but not in control. He's a suspect. A reviled man previously ran the Academy in a brutal regime which fed brutalised officers into the police force. Gamache is working to change the ethos and bring the man to justice.What's really going on is gradually revealed but it's not clear who the murderer is until the end. Interaction between cadets, faculty and an outsider from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police add to the complexity and leave threads to pick up in the future, I hope.In parallel is a hundred year old mystery involving a long lost map of the hidden village of Three Pines.

Wonderful, once again. The new novel always comes with expectations, and every time it seems to just get better and better. I think you really need to read the series from book one, Still Life to truly enjoy and understand this author's amazing capability to draw a reader into her imaginary world. So much so it becomes not just another book number in a series, but another equally absorbing tale with these wonderful characters she has imagined and brought to life. Some are urgent reads, full of desperate times with the Surete, some more psychological thrillers and some, well mellow always springs to mind for me. This one was just that; mellow and moving and although a slow read, it had to be, to extract the full flavour of the unfolding story, one which had me in tears as I came to the conclusion. Now it has been read, I'll be starting it again only this time, more slowly to savour each and every moment with Armande and his troops. The laugh out loud moments are many throughout and each time I start a new book I have a most loved member of Three Pines until the next one when it all changes again.How can you chose?! To read this series is like coming home, relaxing after a long hard day at work and just breathing out, peace at last. To think this was written too during the emotional and exhausting months of caring for her husband makes it even more special. A huge thank you and congratulations. I hope there will be more tales to tell and stories to write and many more happy memory moments for this author and her husband.

I have read all the books in the series to date and look forward to more if they are written.Penny has made me smile and cry.Her books give not only great mysteries but the gift of poetry and art.But greatest gift is the understanding of the Canadian heart and life.As half my family emigrated there and I have visited in my teens,now in my 60s I am visiting soon with so much more to explore and value in that beautiful country.Her books have not only educated me,kept me up all night with their 'edge of seat' storylines but are so touching and beautiful that I will be urging my friends to read this wonderful series.I am in awe.Thank you Louise Penny

A wonderful, fabulous book, beautifully written. I couldn't put it down. I stumbled across it quite by chance, not knowing anything about Louise Penny, but I am now a fan and will be reading her series of Chief Inspector Gamache books right from the beginning. I was delighted to see how many prizes A Great Reckoning had quite rightly won, and found the Acknowledgements at the end - in which she writes of her beloved husband's Alzheimer's Disease - truly moving.