All the Devils Are Here - Louise Penny

 

All the Devils Are Here is Louise Penny’s sixteenth Inspector Armand Gamache mystery in a remarkable series that began in 2005 with Still Life. I’ve read all but four of the Gamache books now, but this is my first experience with a Gamache novel in the audiobook format. I have to confess that if I had gotten nothing else from the audiobook (and I certainly did get more) the experience would have been helpful anyway because I learned I have been mispronouncing “Gamache” in my head all these years – apparently the second “a” in the surname rhymes with the “a” in “cat.” Who knew? 

Narrator Robert Bathurst is himself a veteran of the Gamache books as this appears to be at least the sixth Louise Penny novel for which he’s done the narration. Bathurst, an English actor who spent some of his formative years in Ireland, does a masterful job of assigning slightly different accents to Penny’s characters, including those who speak with a French accent. That kind of thing makes it easier for the reader/listener to distinguish between characters and even helps in creating a visual image of each. And, although, it is difficult for male readers to do female voices without sounding at least a little bit silly at times, Bathurst manages to pull off the trick.

What’s so completely different about All the Devils Are Here is that it takes place in Paris rather then in or around the little Canadian village of Three Pines where the other fifteen novels are set. Regular readers of the series will recall that the previous novel in the series, A Better Man, ended with Gamache’s son-in-law, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, having quit the Montreal police force as Gamache’s second-in-command and accepting a job with a private Paris company. The Gamaches were saying goodbye to their daughter, son-in-law, and grandson as the novel ended. And because the unusually close relationship between Jean-Guy and Armand Gamache is such a key element of the novels, readers were left wondering what Louise Penny had up her sleeve for the next book.

 

Well, now we know.

 

Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache are in Paris for a family reunion of sorts. Annie, their daughter, is about to give birth to her second child, and the Gamaches are excited about seeing their son, also a Paris resident, and his family (including their two granddaughters) again. Gamache’s elderly godfather, Stephen, a man who practically raised the inspector, is also in Paris to celebrate the new addition to the Gamache family. But all of that happiness evaporates suddenly on the Gamache’s first evening in the city when, after a family dinner, Armand’s godfather is ruthlessly run down in the street by a delivery van. It is immediately obvious to Gamache and Reine-Marie that his godfather has been the victim of something much more serious than a hit-and-run. This was no accident.

 Now it is up to Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir to figure out who wanted so badly to kill Gamache’s billionaire godfather – and why. What follows is so complex that I advise readers to pay particularly close attention to every aspect of the investigation as Gamache and Beauvoir try to figure out exactly whom they can trust. Is anyone really who they appear to be? Has the Paris police department been compromised? Is Stephen anything like the man Armand Gamache thought he knew?

New series readers will probably focus most on the plot - and it’s a good one - of All the Devils Are Here, but longtime series readers are likely to more appreciate all of the revelations about the Gamache family that Penny provides. In this one, we are finally getting answers to some of the questions we’ve been wondering about for a long time – especially about the strained relationship between Gamache and his son Daniel. Too, we learn much about Armand Gamache’s boyhood and past here, and that is greatly satisfying.

Bottom Line: Readers are going to miss Three Pines and all of its colorful characters, but this is a necessary chapter in the lives of Gamache and those closest to him. Now to see where Penny takes them next.

Review Copy of Audiobook provided by Publisher