Mary Ann Meyers

Introduced to Louise Penny late in the Gamache series, I have read all but the one book before The Grey Wolf. The pleasure I felt at the prospect of spending several cold winter evenings with the author’s latest Gamache mystery melted like snow flakes as I encountered the increasingly outrageous plot, bristled at the repetition of phrases, and was quickly bored by profanity once employed lightly to much better effect. In past Penny novels, the Chief Inspector’s humility was endearing in a gifted solver of mysteries, but here Gamache came across as almost bumbling long before he was grazed by the bullet that exploded next to his head. Like one other reviewer, I have no idea how Jeanne Caron got into the pump room — a loose end Penny neglects to tie into the final narrative account of the many (too many) characters’ actions. Alas, my willing suspension of disbelief faltered as I searched in vain for plausible motivations for the conspirators (both the bad guys and the good guys) in this melodramatic tale. Bring back the residents of Three Pines, please, as I had grown enormously attached to my Canadian neighbors.