I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t a fan of the last Gamache book, The Madness of Crowds. I won’t say I breathed a sigh of relief when I read the eighteenth book, Louise Penny’s A World of Curiosities. A reader can’t breathe a sigh of relief until the last page because Penny ratchets up the tension as much as she has ever done. However, I felt as if I had returned to a familiar world with this latest novel, and the last book left me feeling uncomfortable and disjointed. Perhaps it was meant to do that, but it was the first time I had been disappointed in a book in this series. Now, Louise Penny takes readers back in time, thirty years, twenty years, to terrible crimes and unforgettable killers.

On Dec. 6, 1989, Gamache was a police officer but one who also trained as a paramedic when a gunman struck at Ecole Polytechnique. That day thirty years earlier lives in Canadian history as a misogynistic attack on women. The gunman only targeted women who dared enter a man’s world and become engineers. Fourteen died, and thirteen more were wounded. The event changed Canadian history, as women fought for gun control. It also changed the direction of Armand Gamache’s life as he applied for the homicide division.

A World of Curiosities takes us back to the first time Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir met twenty years earlier. Although Beauvoir had been relegated to the basement of an outpost of the Sûreté du Québec, Gamache suspected there might be something in the angry, disrespectful man. They were at the scene where a Clotilde Arsenault’s body had been washed onshore, and Beauvoir insisted she had been murdered. Her children had reported her missing, but the thirteen-year-old girl and ten-year-old boy were alone when Gamache went to inform them of her death. It didn’t take long for Gamache to determine that Fiona and Sam Arsenault had been groomed and pimped out. There was evidence to show local involvement. There was also evidence to reveal Clotilde Arsenault’s killer.

A lot has changed in twenty years, especially Gamache and Beauvoir. Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, sponsored Fiona Arsenault to receive her engineering degree at Ecole Polytechnique. She’s stayed with them multiple times in Three Pines. Now, while Myrna, the bookstore owner, welcomes her niece who also graduated with an engineering degree, Fiona brings her brother, Sam, to the village. But, it’s a letter that actually causes the biggest turmoil in the village.

In a letter that is over one hundred fifty years old, a stone mason tells of a room he bricked up in Three Pines. When the villagers open that room, they discover an astonishing painting, based on a historic one. The painting of a world of curiosities is filled with items to represent all kinds of wonders. But, Gamache recognizes that the world also holds enormous danger.

As always, there reaches a point in any discussion of Penny’s books that a reviewer must cut the summary short so as not to give away too much. A World of Curiosities is a study in contrast, as all her books are. There is mercilessness and hatred, and there is forgiveness. There is depravity and violence, but there are moments of love and laughter. Most of all, there are always moments of hope, sometimes a last second reprieve, and the knowledge that “All will be well.”

Louise Penny always includes the reader in a world of knowledge, a world of curiosities, as she discusses art and music, poetry and history. Over the course of the series, we’ve observed as Gamache saw the worst in society. This time, he has to dig and see the worst in himself, as well as his deepest fears. But, Penny points out that it’s the acts of courage, of decency, that provide those moments of hope in life.

For me, it was a contrast in time periods, in actions, in history, that stood out in A World of Curiosities. The events of Dec. 6, 1989 at the Ecole Polytechnique actually happened. That tragedy changed Canadian women forever. And, it might not be what Penny herself saw as the message of the book, but I was moved by the role of women in this one. Watch for the women who take back their power.

Louise Penny’s website is http://louisepenny.com/

A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny. Minotaur Books, 2022. ISBN 9781250145291 (hardcover), 400p.


FTC Full Disclosure – I received a galley to review for a journal.