Tags
Canada, Inspector Gamache, Louise Penny, mystery, pandemic, Quebec, series
I generally don’t review new entries in Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series anymore. If you know me, you know I love the series and Penny’s characters, and regardless of how I feel about each new book individually, I usually don’t feel like I have enough new to say to warrant a review because I am primed to like it, even if I like it more or less than some of her others. However I wanted to talk about a few things related to her latest, The Madness of Crowds.
In The Madness of Crowds, the requisit murder surrounds a professor of statistics visiting the local university near Three Pines and her massive popularity due to some viral and horrific social theories. What is interesting, though, is that this book takes place in a still-fictional post-pandemic world when Covid has been reduced to endemic status, and this professor’s theories were able to gain traction due to the mishandling and politiciziation of the public health response to Covid. This is the first piece of literature I’ve read that deals directly with the pandemic, and it is both a familiar and unsettling experience.
Penny sets the tone right out of the gate, her characters navigating complicated feelings at truly being able to re-emerge into the world. The relief, the nervousness, and the realization that relationships have changed depending on how the people you know responded to the crisis. Penny’s plot revolves around the group think and conspiracy theories, the “madness of crowds” that propels her professor to fame and someone else to murder, that so prolonged the pandemic and changed the way so many people interact with and in the world. I wasn’t sure how I would feel the first time I read “pandemic literature.” However, Penny so strongly believes in the inherent goodness of people and the world despite having an uncanny ability to tap into the insecurities and emotions that breed the awfulness that exists that she keeps the pandemic aspect of the book realistic yet hopeful. It is a clear-eyed yet sensitive exploration of the shared trauma of the last few years. I’ll be interested to see how reader response evolves as we get closer to the truly post-pandemic life where Gamache and his friends and colleagues are (a place that many already think, incorrectly, we are).
Penny is a writer who is influenced and informed by the world around her. She has set many of Gamache’s cases among real events, current and historic, from the opioid crisis to the historic and current mistreatment of indigenous peoples by the Canadian government. She almost couldn’t not write about the pandemic. But here is what I love about Penny as an author. She may have some writing quirks that I don’t always love, but she has integrity and holds herself as an author to the same level of morality and ethics to which she holds Gamache. She takes her responsibility to her readers and as a public voice very seriously. She does not shy away from difficult topics but approaches them with directness, clarity, compassion, and nuance. She may not always get everything quite right, but when she doesn’t, she holds herself accountable. I think that sense of responsibility and accountability shines through in The Madness of Crowds especially, and it is one reason that I love her writing and have such respect for her.
This is clearly not an in-depth review of The Madness of Crowds, but it was a new, challenging, and exciting reading experience. If you are a fan of Penny and her professorial Chief of Homicide, you will love this latest entry. If you haven’t read any of her work yet, I encourage you to jump in and do so.