the long way home a chief inspector gamache novel

Her husband, Peter, was supposed to have returned after a year’s trial separation – and didn’t. The book he is reading: There Is A Balm in Gilead. Likewise, he is not willing to share what he is seeking: balm for his wounds. Clara Morrow joins him on the bench and he senses she wants to reveal something important… but she stops before she can do so. He reads a few lines, comes to a bookmark placed there by his father and realizes he is not ready to go farther.

Very early every day, Armand Gamache walks over to the bench overlooking the village and opens a tiny book that he refuses to show anyone. He is also undergoing therapy with Myrna and daily confronting the fear and guilt that still linger after his injuries. Gamache has retired from the force, and is enjoying the peacefulness of his new life, after dealing with murder for so many years. The Gamaches have moved from Montreal to the village of Three Pines.

And that’s not surprising, given the emotional and physical turmoil he was left to bear at the end of the last book. Armand Gamache’s wife, Reine-Marie, plays a bigger role in this book than in most of the others. The usual cast of characters is present: Jean-Luc Beauvoir, Gamache’s son-in-law and police sidekick for many years, the artist Clara Morrow, Myrna the bookstore owner/psychologist, comfort-food dispensers and Bistro owners Gabri and Olivier, and Ruth, the famous poet. The Long Way Home is as much about Penny’s redemption as it is about Gamache’s and Peter Morrow’s… and the two art professors who are at the center of the story. Could she redeem her writing reputation with this new book? Redemption for… Gamache, Beauvoir, the Morrows and a couple of art professorsĪfter the bang-bang, shoot-shoot excitement of the previous book, How the Light Gets In, and its facile ending, I wondered where Penny would go with this 10th book featuring Chief Inspector Gamache. And when I woke up in the morning, I was writing a review in my head. At one in the morning, when I finished reading the story and then tried falling asleep.Įxcept I kept thinking about the book. Me? I thought it was her best book to date.Īnd the ending made me cry. Some found the conversations boring, others wondered where the action was, and quite a few Amazon reviewers just plain didn’t like the ending.

Many readers of Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache/Three Pines books don’t know what to make of the newest installment in the series, The Long Way Home. The Long Way Home by Louise Penny – at Amazon

The long way home a chief inspector gamache novel