A Better Man

I have read this book before but I think I enjoyed it even more this time round, reading it a bit slower and taking more in.

Gamache returns from suspension to a demoted position, with the hierarchy thinking he wouldn't, to find himself investigating a case of a missing daughter. The difficulty in the case is that the husband is abusive and a drunk so he is the first person that they want to believe killed her. I don't think there have been many times when I have known who the killer was before Gamache.

Mirroring the emotions swirling around the fact that a pregnant woman has been killed is the state of the rivers. It is the start of spring and so the ice is thawing but then building up at bridges and the dams are in danger of giving way show more with the pressure of the water flowing down. Considerable suspense is built up around the weather and who solves the problem now that Gamache is no longer in charge.

Also woven into the plot is the use of social media to make or break people, the damage it can do and how people believe they are annonymous when using it along with the idea of a bond between fathers and daughters. There is a lot going on but it all comes together at the end on a bridge - very symbolic!

Penny's writing has always interested me. She has created what I call the iron fist inside a velvet glove in Chief Inspector Gamache: a tension between cozy crime and a peek into the psyche of people who think differently. She is able to explore a point of view from the crime and relate it to the people in the village. Here, she straddles two paragraphs with the same idea of why do people care - one from the crime and one from the village.

When Gamache didn't answer, Tracey sneered. "I live in a pigsty and you judge. I clean it up and you judge. Well, fuck you. I'm finally free to live the way I want."

They were, Gamache recognised, the words of either an extremely well-balanced person who didn't care what others thought. Or a psychopath. Who didn't care what others thought.

"Why in the world do you care what others think?" demanded Ruth as they sat in the bistro, in front of the warm fire.
p182

She also uses fragments of sentences and quite a lot of short paragraphs to keep the story moving along.

It's a swirling mass of emotions that ends up in love and kindness and a better man winning. show less

Let's be honest. Louise Penny could write an Inspector Gamache novel where all that happens is the residents of Three Pines sit at the bistro and drink cafe au lait ... and I would probably love it! Her writing is amazing, and her plots are often complicated and twisty, but what I really love about these stories is this amazing cast of characters, who are odd, quirky, flawed and absolutely brilliant. So although I've set the bar pretty low as far as mystery plot, Louise Penny always clears the bar with plenty of room to spare. A Better Man, her 15th (!) in the series adds in some new complexities of solving mysteries with added tools like Instagram and the ethical questions that arise with social media.

If you've loved the other books in show more this series, you will not be disappointed. It's classic Louise Penny! show less

Summary: Gamache, Beauvoir, and Lacoste are together again, searching for a missing girl amid rising floods and a flood of social media attacks against Gamache and the art of Clara Morrow.

We left Gamache removed from his position as Chief Superintendent after his daring and legally questionable tactics to quash the drug trade. Jean Guy, who had taken his old position of Chief Inspector of Homicide is headed for a private sector job in Paris in a couple weeks. And Armand? He accepts the one position no one thought he would take–his old job as Chief Inspector. And for two weeks, he is working under Jean Guy, his protege’ and son-in law. Awkward, eh?

During a meeting where Gamache is deferential to his new boss, Agent Cloutier discusses show more a call she received from Homer Godin, the father of her godchild Vivienne. Vivienne, married to an abusive husband, is missing after she had called to say she was leaving and coming to him. Beauvoir assigns him and Cloutier to have a look around, and their encounter with the husband, Carl Tracy, only amplifies their fears.

A larger fear is looming as well. There is a rapid thaw combined with spring rains throughout Quebec. Ice jams threaten bridges, rivers are rising everywhere, including the Bella Bella running through Three Pines, and the giant dams in the north are under stress. Gamache, called back to Montreal for a meeting of top civic leaders, quietly upstages the premier by recommending a drastic, but ultimately effective strategy. He’s dismissed from the meeting, and discovers something else is rising–a social media storm of criticism against him that jeopardizes even his current demoted status. Will Chief Superintendent Toussaint, who Gamache had recommended, protect herself and abandon Gamache to the sharks?

A similar social media storm is surrounding Clara Morrow, whose latest exhibit of miniatures have been panned, causing critics to re-evaluate her past art. Ruth, thinking to help, invites Dominica Oddly, the one New York art critic who has never reviewed Clara’s work to Clara’s studio. And while Oddly speaks glowingly of Clara’s past work, she considers the miniatures–well, as they say in French, merde and proceeds to write a review to that effect and then discovers what it means to tell all the truth with malice, while Clara faces the truth about these works and the wreckage of her career.

Isabelle Lacoste, at loose ends until her new assignment is finalized, joins the investigation to find Vivienne, working with Cloutier, who she has mentored. Then Beauvoir comes down to Three Pines when news of the flooding of the Bella Bella reaches him, and the three team up on the investigation. Amid the harrowing moments of narrowly averting the flooding of Three Pines using the tactics Gamache has recommended elsewhere, they find Vivienne’s body and a bag of her belongings, searched as her husband turns up and demands that they stop.

More and more, the evidence points to Carl Tracy, the husband. Cloutier gains access to a private Instagram account of Tracy’s through his sometime lover and assistant in marketing his pottery, and finds incriminating evidence. But when Tracy is arraigned, with Vivienne’s father present, it all goes sidewise due to the judge’s rulings that errors in procedure mean the whole evidence trail is poisoned fruit and cannot be used. Tracy goes scot-free while Gamache works to restrain Homer Godin from killing him.

It looks like Beauvoir’s last case with Gamache is going to hell. Are all the tweets true? And it has gotten worse. The real video that showed Gamache, Beauvoir, and Lacoste in the factory ambush has been doctored to make Gamache look like a child killer. Then someone under the name @dumbass, who Gamache thinks is Ruth after her stunt with Dominica Oddly, posts the real video, bringing up old wounds for all involved.

What will they do? They go back and look at the evidence. What do they have that isn’t poisoned? And as they do, it takes them in unexpected directions and surprise revelations. The end of this one gets very twisty indeed.

There is a question running throughout, asked most desperately by Homer Godin, filled with grief and revenge, that Gamache and others face–what if it were your daughter, your child? What would you do? Do you try to murder the man who is your daughter’s abuser and killer? Do you let someone do so, when he is as vile as Tracy comes across? Ought the pursuit of justice, often hampered by procedures that protect the rights of the accused, step aside to allow revenge?

There is also a theme of mentors and mentees that runs through the book: Gamache and Beauvoir and their reversed roles and changing relationship as Beauvoir prepares to leave, Isabelle and Cloutier, particularly when Cloutier screws up, and Gamache and a young agent, Bob Cameron, a former football player who lost his job for repeatedly holding to protect his quarterback. Because of a relationship with the victim, he is even a possible suspect, yet we see Gamache beginning to teach, and I suspect we will see more of Bob Cameron.

We also see characters wrestle with the theme of what they will do when they screw up, or are perceived to do by vicious social media. Will Gamache be “a better man”? Will Clara become a better artist? Meanwhile, we are left wondering whether things between Myrna and Billy Williams will go anywhere and stand in amazement at the drunken old poet Ruth as she leads the effort to sandbag the river frontage against rising floods, and whispers wise comfort to Homer at his most murderous.

I continue to love these books as an extended exploration of the character of leadership and the communal decency of this small village. This one had so many layers that wove seamlessly together in a twisting and fascinating plot that I’ve come to recognize as a mark of Penny’s genius. show less

I am often a whiner, a complainer, critical and judgmental... and getting more so as I age. If that is so, can someone please explain to me how my heart makes room for extraordinary characters to live?

A Better Man adds another success to Penny’s remarkably intelligent, moving and compelling Three Pines series. This book further develops the ongoing theme of art, the depth of feeling, pain, denial and revelation that artists experience in the process of considering and creating their art. Whether sculpture, paintings, crafts, wood-working or poetry, Penny uses art as a metaphor for and a way of explaining the emotional intensity of Gamache’s investigations, and for life itself.

Gamache and team learn of a missing woman and start an show more investigation but are forced to focus their attention on a devastating natural disaster, and prevent loss of lives. At a high-level meeting, opinions are given to the best course of action; Gamache is made to feel superfluous. After helping to support the efforts at Three Pines, and directing some ditch digging, he has headed off the urgent danger. But while doing this he finds Vivienne. He and his team are convinced that an abusive husband is the killer but when their case crumbles, they need to re-examine the evidence and re-think everything.

Pulling the rug out from under Gamache and her readers is a great strength of Penny’s. She masterfully leads us through many twists and turns, red herrings and clues, ups and downs until you are swallowed up, spit out and stunned. Emotionally bruising, and incredibly satisfying.

Sad to know that Jean-Guy Beauvoir and family are re-locating. Will Myrna’s life change? What about Clara; will her meeting with a new character help?
Excellent book, brilliant series! show less

My thanks to the Author publishers and NetGalley for providing me with a Kindle version of this book to read and honestly review.
This is the fifteenth book in the Gamache of the Surete du Quebec series and after reading this superb book, I am ashamed to admit this is the first I have read but it will not be the last. Whilst there are numerous references to previous cases this in no way spoilt my enjoyment and the book works as a standalone novel. Well written cerebral descriptive with quality characters throughout, this is a modern day but somewhat old fashioned Police procedural. Old fashioned because it's not psychological terror, or a glut of bodies as a serial killer taunts the Police, no it's a battered Wife missing person presumed show more murdered, seemingly open and shut case. But it's so much more, clever twists dramatic tense and gripping from first to last page.
Completely and utterly recommended. show less

Two years ago, I somehow came across “Still Life”, the first in a series about Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec, Canada. It was a good book, no doubt, and I was quick to catch up with the series which I greatly enjoyed.

What I expected to be a standard police procedural turned out to be so much more. Gamache isn’t the young, enthusiastic investigator but a man in his fifties who has experienced a lot and instead of becoming disillusioned, embittered or hopeless as one might expect, he grows.

“Things are strongest where they’re broken.” is how Gamache puts it and how he lives – and he himself has been broken a lot of times. He’s not the “Gentleman cop” that George’s Lynley is (or used to be). show more He’s not Rankin’s cynical Inspector Rebus.

Armand Gamache is a literary unicum.



In this fifteenth novel of the series, Gamache investigates the disappearance of a young woman who is beaten by her husband. She is soon found dead and so is her murderer. If he can be convicted, though, is not quite as certain...

As always, Gamache’s home, the small village “Three Pines”, and its inhabitants play a role (albeit less prominently than in some of the other books) and we get treated to all the familiar characters like Ruth, the semi-insane poet, Clara, the artist, and, of course, Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste.

The relationships between the characters are another of the major highlights of this series: The closely-knit and yet open, welcoming and open-minded community of “Three Pines” is the fictious place we would love our kids to grow up in.

These books live from the relationships so lovingly depicted and the almost mythical quality of “Three Pines”.





As with every one of her Gamache novels, Penny has a fundamental topic which might not continually take a centre place but which will surface throughout the novel. In this case it’s vigilantism – how do the central characters deal with it themselves when most seriously tempted; when all it would take is looking away at the right moment...



“It was all Jean-Guy Beauvoir could do not to turn around. March back to […]. Tell Armand and Reine-Marie and Billy to look away while he forced […] to a kneeling position, took out his gun. Placed it at the base of the monster’s skull. And fired.”



And – how would we deal with it? Would we give in to the temptation? I’m going to admit it: I for one was sympathising with Beauvoir at that (rather early!) point in the story. I hope I’d do as he does...

Would we be able to face the consequences of our deeds?



““Consequences,” said Gamache. “We must always consider the consequences of our actions. Or inaction. It won’t necessarily change what we do, but we need to be aware of the effect.”



Ultimately, though, both Gamache and Beauvoir disregard exactly that advice and that’s part of what so greatly appeals to me about those two men. When they feel they have to act, they’re just going to do it – no matter the consequences because it’s right:



“Homer plowed right through them, running straight into the Bella Bella. Wading in. Breaking through the thin ice at the shore, he fought his way forward. To get to his little girl.

Gamache and Beauvoir plunged in after him.”



Even if that means plunging into a flooding river – and Penny pulls that off effortlessly. She has given each character her books so much personality that we never – not for a second – doubt they would do this. It’s another one of the immense strengths of Penny’s story-telling – she is a master of characterisation.



As similar both Gamache and Beauvoir are, they are different kinds of investigators which is another highly interesting aspect of the Gamache novels:



“While Jean-Guy Beauvoir explored the tangible, what could be touched, Armand Gamache explored what was felt. He went into that chaotic territory. Hunting. Searching. Tracking. Immersing himself in emotions until he found one so rancid it led to a killer.

Beauvoir stopped at the door. Gamache went through it.”



All this may sound intimidating if you’re just in it to read a good mystery but do not despair because while there’s lots of serious wisdom and kindness to be found in these books, they never take themselves too seriously and there’s always a good portion of humour involved:



“Isabelle. Jean-Guy. Armand. Three colleagues. Three friends. A trinity. Sturdy. Eternal. Together. “Three Pines,” she said. “Three Stooges,” said Ruth as she walked by and entered the bistro.”



As usual, there are very few things not to like about a Gamache novel but there are two minor issues in this one: First of all, there’s a huge flooding. Basically, the entire province of Quebec is in a state of emergency and we get to read quite a bit about it in the first half of the book. This entire part of the story is pretty much completely neglected in the second half. It’s not a big deal but it’s a loose end that could easily have been avoided.



A little more annoying were the weird and superfluous injections of Twitter messages at the beginning of a few chapters. They didn’t really add to the story and they were an unwelcome distraction. I don’t get why some authors these days seem to believe they cannot write a good modern book without directly adding social media parts. Especially when they obviously don’t quite grasp how said social media work (in a technological sense).



Nevertheless, these are really minor issues that simply don’t matter considering Louise Penny’s achievement by writing yet another, the fifteenth (!), absolutely fabulous book.





Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram show less

Quebec is flooding and while everyone is used to turning to Gamache to prevent the loss of countless lives, he’s no longer in any position to help. So he turns his attention to a lost young woman, whose deadbeat of a husband has likely murdered and stashed her body. Gamache empathizes with her father, having a daughter of a similar age, and takes him into his home to keep him from killing the evil son-in-law. When Gamache takes matters into his his own hands to keep the river from flooding Three Pines, he ends up on the good-for-nothing man’s land digging a spillway. Sure enough, they find clues about the missing woman buried out there. A murder trial ensues. The judge, making cutting edge legal decisions, turns Gamache and his team show more upside down trying to convict the monster. Immensely frustrating, even for the reader. Until all the pieces come together. Meanwhile, Gamache’s personal life faces immense changes. How will he go on? It’s very hard to stop midstream reading the series when Penny keeps us hanging with the ever-changing lives of those in Gamache’s life and the residents of Three Pines. But it’s time for a break for me, to go up for some air before reading more in the series. Otherwise, I’ll soon be catching up to her current book, and then I’ll have to wait for her to write the next in the series! Who wants that!?! show less