This is the toughest review I write every year. It’s hard to talk about Louise Penny’s latest Armand Gamache novel, The Grey Wolf, without revealing much. It’s best to say fans will not be disappointed. She launches a new arc, finishes a storyline, but leaves readers with a cliffhanger. Along the way, she frightens us, as always, with her acute awareness of political issues.

Phone calls disrupt the peacefulness of a Sunday morning in Quebec, but it’s only the beginning of a larger problem for Armand Gamache, When he returns to work on Monday morning, the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec receives an unexpected package. Although his team treats it as if it was a bomb, the package with its note and contents presents a bigger bomb. It leads Gamache to a small cafe where he’s surrounded by his team, but he can’t prevent a murder. It’s a murder that leads to fear for his country, a fear he can only share with a few people without spreading terror throughout Quebec. And, he realizes there are few people he trusts, even though he placed some of those people in high positions.

Gamache knows he can trust the two people who share the second-in-command position, his son-in-law, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and Inspector Isabel Lacoste. He’s burdened them before, but this time, he sends them across lakes and oceans, looking for pieces of the puzzle before someone can threaten and terrorize the country.

Louise Penny returns to a familiar theme of duality, as well as a familiar location. She often deals with light and dark, good and evil, “Of Heaven and the Hell on earth that was coming.” There are stories of the Grey Wolf and the Black Wolf, an allegory for today. She writes frightening novels of ordinary people, such as Gamache and his family, the people of Three Pines, who are threatened by larger events they can’t control. In book after book, Penny forces readers to confront world events and the politics that can destroy governments and lives.

There is so much I wish I could say about The Grey Wolf. As always, Penny’s books are filled with courage, the courage of ordinary people confronted by their worst fears. She alleviates one fear with the storyline in The Grey Wolf, but she leaves us waiting, with bated breath, for the next step in the story arc.

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

The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny. Minotaur Books, 2024. ISBN 9781250328137 (hardcover), 432p.

FTC Full Disclosure – The publicist sent me an ARC, with no expectation of a positive review.