A Better Man by Louise Penny: A review

This is the fifteenth in Louise Penny's Three Pines Armand Gamache mystery series. She produces a new one, regular as clockwork, every summer. Her multitude of fans, among whom I count myself, await them impatiently.

The bane of long series like this one is that their plots tend to become formulaic and predictable. Somehow Penny has avoided this. Each new entry seems to break new ground and deal with the current state of the world. In A Better Man, she explores as she has not before the deep physical and psychological damage that domestic violence does in long-term effects on the personalities of victims. And she examines the damage that the unbridled hate expressed through social media does to the fabric of society.

Moreover, it is not just the human on human violence, both physical and psychological, that play an important role in this plot; the violence of Nature is the backdrop of it all. It is April, "the cruelest month", and Quebec is experiencing catastrophic floods such as it has not seen before. The little village of Three Pines watches as its meandering Bella Bella River becomes a raging torrent and threatens to wash the village away. The villagers fight to save their homes with sandbags to hold back the waters and backhoes to divert some of the floods.

Meanwhile, of course, crime does not take a holiday.

After the events of the last book, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache had been demoted and suspended for nine months. No longer the head of the Surete du Quebec, he had been offered the position of head of Homicide Division, a position he held many years before. It was intended as an insult and humiliation and they were sure he wouldn't accept. After all these years, little do his enemies understand Gamache.

As this book begins, it is his first day back on the job as head of Homicide, sharing the position with his son-in-law Jean-Guy Beauvoir who has resigned and will be leaving the Surete in a couple of weeks. He's not only leaving the Surete, he's leaving Canada. He and his growing family are moving to Paris.

On this first day, Gamache learns from one of the officers of a report of a missing woman. The distraught father had contacted the officer, whom he knew, to ask for her help. His daughter was married to a man who abused her and now she has disappeared. The father is sure that something terrible has happened.

As the investigators begin their work, they find themselves jumping to an easy conclusion as to what might have happened. It seems so obvious to them all that the husband must have done something to her. We see them not approaching the investigation with open minds but seeking to find evidence that will prove their theory.

Then as the flood continues, the body of the woman is found tangled in the roots of a tree along the riverbank. It becomes a potential murder investigation.

There are multiple twists and turns and red herrings in this plot. I despaired of ever figuring out whodunit, but in the end, it all came together and made a kind of sense.

As always with a Penny book, this provided a pleasant read. Opening one of her books is always a bit like visiting old friends. My only complaint really is that she lays it on a bit thick with the descriptions of the decency and open-heartedness of all the villagers, even Ruth the irascible poet and her duck, and she often recapitulates events of previous books for those who haven't read them. (Are there even such people?) It becomes a bit tiresome for us old Three Pines hands. But that is a minor quibble.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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

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