Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Canadian author Louise Penny has so far written nine stories in this series. The first four, labeled "Three Pines Mysteries," were well written, homey whodunits set in a small town in Canada and solved by Chief Inspector Gamache and his sidekick Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the Surete du Quebec. By the time Book 5, "The Brutal Telling" (often referred to as Penny's breakout novel) came out, the cover label had changed to "A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel." Book 6, "Bury Your Dead" opens with the news that in the interim between the "Brutal" and "Bury" books, something horrendous had happened that left many of Gamache's men dead and both Gamache and Beauvoir seriously injured and emotionally ravaged. The emotional and physical impact of that tragedy will follow the two detectives relentlessly through all the Gamache novels that follow. Which is why I recommend newbies read "Bury Your Dead," "A Trick of the Light," and "The Beautiful Mystery" before tackling this one. By the time we get to this ninth in the series, the bad apples, led by the villainous Chief Inspector Francoeur, will have taken over control of the Surete from Gamache and the good guys; the Francoeur faction will have grabbed away all of Gamache's best detectives--including Beauvoir--and are blatantly plotting to force Gamache's resignation. While all this is going on, there's a murder to be solved. Gamache has been called to Three Pines, where Myrna, the bookstore owner, needs his help finding her missing friend Constance, who, it will turn out, was (a) murdered and (b) the last of Canada's famous Ouellet quintuplets. In recent years I've read all the Gamache books as soon as they come out...which means there's at least a year and a good couple of dozen other novels between my last Penny novel and its successor. Till now, the author's usually been really good at reminding her readers of the back story basics. But not this time. This time she seems to think readers could just pick up where the action and characters and relationships left off a year ago and take it from there without added memory joggers. I found myself calling friends and asking, hey do you remember back in "The Beautiful Mystery" how and why Beauvoir let himself get co-opted by Francoeur and why he now has gone over to the other side and how Gamache let that happen etc.? I could be wrong here, but I think jumping into this 9th book in this exceedingly complex series, with its 400 pages and large cast of characters without having first read its three or four predecessors would be madly confusing and a real challenge. ADDENDA 8/26/13 re the conversations here among Amazon reviewers on whether this is or is not the ending of this series: Quote from the opening paragraph of Maureen Corrigan's rave Book World review in today's Washington Post: "'How the Light Gets In' is the culmination of a story arc that has been developing over the most recent books; happily, it is not the termination of the series." Addenda 4/13/14: I just read that next in the series, due out in August '14, is "The Long Way Home," with Gamache retired and living in Three Pines.