Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is fighting a losing battle. His once respected homicide department, the pride of the Quebec de Surete, has been decimated, good officers replaced by those who don’t care. People he nurtured and trusted may no longer be in his camp. The investigation into a bigger conspiracy is going nowhere and the always stable facade of Armand Gamache is starting to crack. What better time for a murder  to take his mind off of his current problems?

It is Christmas time and a Montreal murder with ties to his favorite idyllic village takes Armand Gamache back to Three Pines and the comfort of long-time friends. As he struggles to unravel the threads of a life suddenly and violently ended, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache senses that the shadowy events that have dogged his every step for years will finally be coming to light, for good or for ill.

Louise Penny’s latest novel, the ninth in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, may be her most satisfying read to date, particularly after the controversial choices made in her last novel, The Beautiful Mystery. How the Light Gets In is a layered, complex and compelling novel packed with moments of gut-wrenching drama and heart-racing suspense. By setting it in the village of Three Pines, Penny is able to bring in beloved characters from previous novels which gives the tension-filled story a much needed foundation of comfort and familiarity upon which to build. Though I questioned the legitimacy of the handling of one of the series’ prime characters in The Beautiful Mystery, the end result of those choices makes How the Light Gets In the kind of page-turning novel that kept me up until 1 a.m. this morning, having tread the last two hundred pages of this roughly 400-page novel in one sitting.

I closed the book after reading the last dozen or so pages with tears streaming down my face and the kind of satisfied smile that can only come from being immersed in a cracking good read. Those reviewers who were disappointed by The Beautiful Mystery and vowed to never read Louise Penny again are missing out on a novel that reaffirms just why people fell for Louise Penny’s creation in the first place.

My rating: 10/10 stars

The remainder of this review, until the final paragraph, is extremely SPOILER-FILLED, not only for How the Light Gets In but for the novels that have come before. You don’t want to spoil yourself if you have not read this immensely satisfying series. If you have read this novel, I would love to discuss it in detail. Please make sure to preface any spoiler-laden comments with a warning. Thank you.

In The Beautiful Mystery, Louise Penny takes Armand Gamache’s protege, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and reintroduces his drug-addiction, in the process having Beauvoir turn on the man who has saved his life, literally and figuratively, in more than one instance. In so doing she also had this character destroy a budding romance with Gamache’s daughter Annie. While those incidents in and of themselves are upsetting for readers who have grown fond of these characters, had the novel done this in a plausible manner readers like myself would have been upset with the choices but would have given Penny kudos for making it believable. For it was very much in Beauvoir’s nature to do this…just not in a matter of a couple of days with the choices and behaviors seeming to come out of nowhere.

The more I’ve thought about it over the last few weeks the more I believe Penny painted herself in a corner with the locked room mystery structure of The Beautiful Mystery. This latest novel is a great deal longer in page/word count and the isolated setting of The Beautiful Mystery did not lend itself to a long drawn-out story. Instead the events took place in a matter of days and in that time Beauvoir took a fall from grace that was tantamount to a suicidal plunge. It just didn’t ring true that such a change could take place in such a short period of time. That being said, the results of the fractured relationship makes How the Light Gets In a much more compelling read than it would have been otherwise (though don’t get me wrong, even without the Beauvoir elements this is a darn fine read).

Regardless of what classification of mystery one wants to use to categorize the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache mysteries, they run the same risk as many mystery series in being predictable or falling into a formula. I for one have never felt that formula in and of itself is a bad thing, it is what an author does with the formula that matters. A recipe that creates something of great delight need not be wildly altered simply to say one did it differently. It can be added to, for creativity’s sake, but the core ingredients are still necessary for success. One of the many reasons I’ve enjoyed Louise Penny’s books is that she messes with the formula in creative ways while still retaining the base structure that hooked readers in the first place. Sometimes her novels act almost entirely as stand alone works and others, like these last two, are a definite continuation of the previous novel. There is always a running story arc with the main characters, but sometimes that is less of a focus, at other times more.

These last two novels bring in elements that began in the her debut novel and have brought them to an exciting, tension-filled head. In so doing it feels like Penny has now actually resolved this story line. Not that there won’t be repercussions and allusions to it in future stories (if there are future stories…more on that soon), but How the Light Gets In really does tie up a great many story threads and does so with palpable satisfaction for faithful readers of this series. Which leads me to a thought…is this the end? It certainly feels as if this could be the final Gamache novel, while at the same time giving an obvious nod to the reader that while Gamache may feel like a retirement to Three Pines is a much-deserved reward for his years of service, his sharp mind and almost pathological need to save others will result in his getting back to work at some point. And let’s be honest, Three Pines may seem idyllic but it is also one murderous little village. Even in retirement Gamache is bound to have a body show up on his doorstep.

I’ve only been a Louise Penny fan for a year now, having read the first book, Still Life, last August. In that year I have become a devoted, passionate and gushing fan. One of the things I feel the need to gush about is the way in which Penny has been faithful to who she created Gamache to be while at the same time showing glimpses of how he too is all too human. While readers expect Gamache to be the hero and to come out on top, Louise Penny has done a brilliant job with keeping readers slightly off balance, wondering if all that Gamache is trying to achieve is in reality simply a house of cards. I hoped for and desperately wanted there to be some behind-the-scenes heroics that Gamache had set up but until the very end it looked like that might not be the case. Needless to say I broke into a huge smile and felt like pumping my fist in the air when Gamache revealed to Francouer that his silent and resigned allowing of his department being stripped was his way to get loyal people into all the other branches of the station. That was such a cool scene.

And what about the reintroduction of officer Yvette Nichol? She was such a perfect character to loathe in the earlier novels and the way in which Penny defied the expectations she had set up with the character were great then and were just as great this time around. I loved how Penny managed to keep Nichol true to her character, to her character flaws, while giving her a moment of humanity and revealing her dedication to Gamache after all he had done for her.

It was also so wonderful to get back to Three Pines after a break. The Christmas setting of the novel, coupled with that absolutely gorgeous cover image, was a welcome respite from the 100+ heat index temperatures we have been experiencing these last few days. I got lost in the description of the snow and the cold and all the delicious cold weather food and drink. Louise Penny is nothing if not a temptress when it comes to her description of food and drink in her novels. My mouth waters in envy in every volume. I loved spending time with some of the Three Pines characters again. Felt like going home.

I wasn’t sure going into this novel whether or not I was getting fatigued by the ongoing video/Arnot case storyline and thus I was pleased that Penny added unexpected twists and revelations there that made the story feel fresh while at the same time wrapping it up in a way that acknowledges that she is a skilled author and knows just how far to push things. I thought the pacing of this one was fantastic, with snippets of overlapping story that kept ratcheting up the suspense.

And this is all without even touching on the murder mystery. Admittedly this part of the story was secondary the main events but I found it interesting and even though I was very much wrapped up in what was happening with Gamache and Beauvoir and the conspiracy, I also found myself anxious to get back to the Contance storyline whenever the novel went away from it.

And the ending sequence! I am not exaggerating, I started tearing up as Beauvoir returned to Three Pines to try to save Gamache and the tears flowed all the way to the end of the book and beyond. It was just SO GOOD. So intense and satisfying. This is such a character-driven series and I love the journey she has brought these characters, and we the readers, on for these nine novels.

SPOILERS OVER

If you are a fan of character-focused storytelling, cozy villages with eccentric residents, good food, books, art, music…and oh, a compelling mystery now and then…you must pick up Still Life and tuck into the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series.

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Links to my reviews for the other novels in order:

Still Life
A Fatal Grace
The Cruelest Month
A Rule Against Murder
The Brutal Telling
Bury Your Dead
A Trick of the Light
The Beautiful Mystery