The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny: A review

The Nature of the Beast (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #11)

The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When nine-year-old Laurent Lepage bursts into the bistro in the sleepy little village of Three Pines on a beautiful mid-September afternoon excitedly telling the patrons there about a huge gun, bigger than a house, that he found in the woods, his listeners smile and shrug it off, assuming that it is just another of Laurent's tall tales. For Laurent is a small boy with an outsized imagination full of aliens and monsters, and when he says that his huge gun has a monster on it, that confirms things for the villagers: Just another of Laurent's tales.

Laurent begs his friend Armand Gamache, the now retired Chief Inspector from the Sûreté, to come and look at the gun, Gamache instead loads the boy and his bicycle into his car and drives him home.

But one person present in the bistro that day to hear Laurent's story knew that he could actually be telling the literal truth. That person would do anything to ensure that this story doesn't get out, that it doesn't get believed. Anything includes killing a nine-year-old child.

One day later Laurent doesn't come home from his day's play and when his parents and other villagers go looking for him, they find his body, along with his bicycle, in a ditch beside the road. It appears that he may have hit a rut in the road and swerved into the ditch where he hit his head on a rock and was instantly killed.

But something about the scene of death does not add up for the eagle-eyed Gamache. There's something about the placement of the body that is wrong.

And where is Laurent's "gun"? His father had carved a limb for him which Laurent's imagination turned into a play gun with which he defended his village. He was never without it when he was out for a day's play, but the "gun" is nowhere to be found.

Once again the villagers fan out to search, this time looking for Laurent's stick, and, finally, deep in the woods, they find it. They find it next to the house-sized gun that Laurent had tried to warn them about. The gun that had the monster on it.

The gun was, in fact, a rocket launcher that had been built back in the '80s for something called the Babylon Project. It was a project of evil intent, symbolized by the image of the biblical "Whore of Babylon" etched into the gun's side, that was put together by some rogue weapons designers and a huckster who intended to sell the massive guns to be produced on the world firearms market - sell them to the highest bidder. Before that could happen, though, the huckster was killed in Brussels and the guns, if they ever existed, disappeared.

Once the huge gun, along with Laurent's stick, is found near Three Pines, it is clear that the child's death was no accident. He was murdered to keep him quiet.

Before this murder can be solved, another one occurs. Antoinette Lemaitre of Three Pines was planning to direct a play at the local theatre. It was a play called She Sat Down and Wept by an anonymous author. But it turns out that the author is not really anonymous. His name is John Fleming and he is a notorious serial killer, presently incarcerated in the Special Handling Unit.

Gamache, who knows the evils that Fleming committed, feels intuitively that the two murders are somehow related and that all of this is somehow connected to Fleming. He faces skepticism for his theory from his former Sûreté colleagues. They should know better.

Louise Penny has once again given us a convoluted and thoughtful tale about the nature of evil and of how people choose to face it. We find Gamache chafing a bit under his early retirement and considering offers that he has had to return to work. Although this good and decent man is appalled by murder, he is somehow addicted to the solving of these crimes and he's finding it very hard to simply walk away from all that. It is made harder by the fact that his former homicide team, made up of his hand-picked proteges, still turn to him for advice.

I'm betting that Gamache is going to unretire in the next book and return to officially solving crimes once again. But even if he doesn't, there seem to be enough murders happening in his idyllic retirement village to keep him preoccupied and engaged in the detecting game.

View all my reviews

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

The Nature of Things

Search This Blog