A Great Reckoning

Book 12 and this one did not disappoint. Enjoyed immensely. I look forward to.book 13! Take time for this book.

I really enjoyed this book and actually believe it has been my favorite one. You have a good plot and a great ending.

I always enjoy the twists and turn in these intricate stories, and love to be surprised by the ending. I highly recommend all Louise Penny books, but I especially like this one. Enjoy!

I have yet to read a book by Louise Penny that I didn't love. She is my go to author when life becomes difficult. She consistently softens the world around me and gives me hope.

This 11th book kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time! I truly loved all the twists and turns that all of Louise Penny's books have skillfully woven into them, but this one was extraordinary!

Still cleaning up the corruption of his police department, he takes a position on the police academy to reclaim and heal the cadets

These characters continue to evolve, to grow, to hurt and to heal.I’m invested in them like no other group of characters in any book I’ve ever read. This was indeed a great reckoning!

Of all The Three Pines' stories this has been my favorite!!! It had the feeling of being home with the characters while there were multiple mysteries going on throughout the story.

Louise Penny continues to enthrall me with her exquisite plotting, characters I adore, lyrical writing and in A Great Reckoning, several times when I laughed out loud. Truly a gifted writer. I am grateful for her talent and the enjoyment I receive from it.

Every book is better than its predecessors. From the character development through the series, at this point I feel I know the village and each person in it. I cried at the baptism and I smiled at the realization by the end of who Amelia is… and at Gamache’s kindness. I love these books. I learn history as I get my fix with the mysteries, and appreciate the lack of gore. Thank you Louise Penny for producing such amazing literary works! Until next time, I’m FINE!

Chief Inspector Gamache #12Gamache has come out retirement and has taken over leadership of the Sûreté academy, hoping to weed out further corruption. It starts out a little slow, but trust the process. This one has everything: intrigue, excitement, betrayal, family (food!), against the backdrop of the Canadian winter. Our favorite characters are still in Three Pines and take part in this story, but it’s the village history that becomes a focal point, alongside the mystery.Action in the book is divided between Three Pines and the Academy which made me happy. There is an interesting twist when Gamache himself is suspected of murder and a lot of emotions are aroused especially amongst all the friends in Three Pines. Then a number of people suspect him of something else altogether! Poor Armand certainly leaves himself open to suspicion as he plays his cards close to his chest and does not share his personal knowledge with anyone, including the reader.This is a book that is hard to put down. The story is tense and mysterious and moves along at a great pace. As it approached the final page I thought we were never going to discover who Amelia really was. It was saved to the very last paragraph.Louise Penny has a superb gift for describing scenes and people so that you feel like you are right there ... enjoying the food, sitting in front of a fire, and are part of the conversation. These are stories of relationships and morality. Stories of the human heart. Kudos, Madam Penny, for never letting me feel cheated by your novels.

"A Great Reckoning" is #12 in the Three Pines series of stories. It seems impossible, as at once is seems as if I've been reading them forever, and it also seems as if I just started. The characters have evolved, as has the complexity of the plots. In this edition of the Chief Inspector Gamache series, Armand is no longer a Chief Inspector of Homicide in the Surete de Quebec. He has stepped out of retirement to take a new challenge: cleaning house at the academy that trains the future agents of the Surete.Now Commander Gamache, he has stepped into a quagmire. Thank goodness that he's brought with him his now son-in-law, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, as his second in command. Technically, Jean-Guy is on leave from the Surete de Quebec, so he's still a serving officer of the Homicide Unit. It's a good thing, too, because there's a murder in the Academy, and fingers begin pointing at everybody, including Commander Gamache.As always, Louise Penny's story is intriguing and original, as well as being well presented. Her plot lines can get a little blurred and/or confusing, but an attentive reader is rewarded with being pulled into the many stories with the story. As I progressed deeper into this group of mysteries within the mystery, I found my e-reader harder and harder to close."A Great Reckoning" is a great story, well told. Penny writes intelligently and her prose is at once sophisticated but real. I like that. I love the Three Pines stories. My bet is that you will, too.

Here we are again. Three books, in a row. I've never reviewed two books by an author, and now MS Penny has me down for four! Each one, actually since the first has been deeper, more complex, more involving to the reader than the one before: not just a police procedural nor a mystery within a procedural, but a time interval in the lives of Armand and Reine Marie and now extensive family and friends. Originally, our point of care and concern was Chief Inspecteur of the Sûreté, Armand Gamâche, and book by book our knowledge, respect, affection, and yes, love has extended ever outward to his children, his beloved assistants, Jean Guy and Isabelle, his new friends and neighbors in Trois Pins where we KNEW he would find Sanctuary and healing, as would we. His life is now part of ours. Personally, one of the very best aspects of reading this series is MS Penny has allowed Armand not to be perfect. She has allowed us and him to learn forgiveness. That is spectacular in a hero - to be broken and mended. Side note: of course Reine Marie is perfect, but then how else would Armand learn it is human and normal to make mistakes? No, seriously, a strong loving supportive partner makes forgiveness, reparation and return to conscious repair of one's life possible.All this boils down to: read this series! You are going to get so much more out of each and every book than you ever dreamed, they are really really good, deep and thoughtful and MS Louise Penny will be the best author and friend you never met. I promise. You know me (a little bit) and I don't make promises easily. I'm an old style Texan, the daughter of a son of a Baptist minister who couldn't say a bad word about anybody, and didn't, and kept every promise he ever made. Well, I CAN say bad words about everybody, but I DO keep my promises, I reckon. Be good to yourselves and learn something important from MS Penny. Her road goes somewhere not on any map, but worth finding. P.S. I just found out today after this was posted that Ms. Penny's husband Michael has passed away. I would like those for us who feel our lives have been so enriched by her to send some support and kindness back to her for all she has given us to stretch our minds and hearts. Ms. Louise, you are an extraordinary woman, I'm certain in part because of the love and life you shared with the fine man you described as your husband and your boys. You have given us some of that through your books, so we will give back to you any way you wish, but certainly by enjoyment and purchase and loyalty of your books. Take care as we care.

Penny’s beloved detective, Armand Gamache, retired as head of Homicide at the Sureté, Quebec’s police force, at the end of How the Light Gets In, the preceding book in the series, after finally ending widespread corruption in the agency and its author, Sylvain Francouer, his arch-nemesis. In this book he turns to destroying the roots of that corruption, which lie in the Academy where new Sureté officers are trained. The academy has been run by Serge Leduc, “The Duke,” a venal and sadistic man intent on turning out the sort of police agents who would have pleased Francouer. When Gamache takes over the school, he keeps Leduc on rather than firing him so he can keep an eye on him, planning to expose all his misdeeds later. He never gets that chance, though, because someone murders Leduc. Suspicion falls on four cadets at the school, two older and two younger—and on Gamache himself.The identity of Leduc’s murderer is far from the only mystery in the book, however. Others include a strangely illustrated map found, stuffed in with other papers, inside the walls of the bistro at Three Pines, the semi-magical Quebec village in which Gamache and his wife now live; the reason why Gamache is so focused on Amelia, one of the two younger cadets; and the nature of the complex relationship between Gamache and Michel Brebeuf, whom he has brought out of retirement to be a professor at the academy—a relationship that reaches back into Gamache’s childhood.Penny’s books are always good murder mysteries, but their spectacular strength lies in her complex and fascinating characters and their equally complex relationships. This book has a great deal to say about friendship and how it can develop and change in both positive and negative ways. It also talks about mentoring and ways that older and more experienced people can influence the young for better or worse. And finally, of course, there is the pleasure of visiting Penny’s familiar characters: Gamache himself, his beloved wife, his colleagues at the Sureté, and the residents of Three Pines, right down to grumpy elderly poet Ruth and her pet duck.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is back, having decided what role to undertake with the Quebec Surete. He’s accepted the position of commandment at the Surete Academy, and for a simple reason: The massive corruption he exposed in the Surete itself is not done until what is happening at the academy is also changed. And what is happening is a crime in and of itself – the shaping of police officers into brutal killers who believe society is their enemy.Inexplicably to almost everyone but himself, he retains Serge Leduc as a professor, the man who’s taken kickbacks and bribes and the chief culprit in what has happened at the academy. What Gamache sees is that Leduc isn’t intelligent enough to pull off everything that’s been happening; there’s someone else, hidden in the shadows. Gamache also hires a disgraced officer, Michel Brebeuf, who is also Gamache’s former best friend from childhood.Leduc is found dead, at first believed to be a suicide, but it’s soon determined he’s a victim of murder. Gamache himself may be a suspect. What the inspector does is to spirit four police cadets away from the academy to Three Pines, the village where he and his wife Reine-Marie now live. The lives of the cadets are in danger; and one of them may be a killer.“A Great Reckoning” by mystery writer Louise Penny may be her best Gamache story yet. (I think I’ve said that about 10 times now.) Penny weaves an intriguing mystery through the lives of the Surete officials and the villagers of Three Pines.And we finally learn why Three Pines cannot be found on any map, and who it was who actually planted the pines that give the village its name. A map found in a wall in the village plays a significant role in the story; a copy of it will be found in the nightstand of the murdered man.Gamache must deal with an investigation that has his name of the list of suspects; an increasingly irritated officer from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, sent to ensure a proper investigation; four cadets who resent their commandant; and doubts raised by his own friends.Penny spends as much time drawing her minor characters as she does the major ones. Foul-mouthed poet Ruth Zardo, who’s been part of the series since the first book, is back with her equally foul-mouthed duck Rosa. So are artist Clara Morrow, bookstore owner Myrna, bistro owners Olivier and Gabriel, and Gamache’s right-hand man and now son-in-law, Jean-Guy Beauvoir.“A Great Reckoning” is one terrific story.

The twelfth book in the series and a good one. Once again I learned something new. This time it was "orienteering" about early mapping when a strange, funny map was found within the walls of an old house along with other old newspapers used as insulation against the cold. The mystery of the map runs throughout the story. Is there a connection of the map to the academy or is it just a red herring in the story?"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." --- Matthew 10:36 This is a point of consideration throughout the story.One reviewer said that they believed that the theme of this book is "what a mistake it is to make judgments based on appearance or outward traits." Outward appearance plays a large part in how each character responds to the other characters. Either how they look - such as Amelia's appearance...with many body piercings and several tattoos or her off-putting actions - or the hostile behavior of Jacques who has been under the strong influence of Serge Leduc (the Duke) who ran the academy with evil intent. Or even the misinterpretation of Armand Gamache who has taken on the job of cleaning up the malevolent influences of Leduc's turning green freshmen cadets into hardened, cruel officers. Officers who believed that they weren't there to guard the population, but to be on guard against them. For those officers, the citizens were the enemy. The officers trusted no one. This is the atmosphere into which Gamache has entered...the atmosphere that he will attempt to correct. It will take time. So did Gamache immediately fire the evil Leduc? You might expect that, but, no, he did not. Why did he allow the rotten apple to remain in the academy barrel? What did he expect to happen? What did happen was a surprise to Arman Gamache. Was this a case of Matthew 10:36?

Louise Penny writes about Chief Inspector Armand Gamache’s new job in “A GREAT RECKONING.” As Director of the Surete du Quebec’s cadet academy, Gamache finds the body of a professor who has been shot, four cadets with secrets, many people with motives, and an old map that doesn’t make sense but that becomes very involved in the story. Further investigation reveal his own partial fingerprints on the murder weapon, his manipulation of the faculty and curriculum, his odd behavior prior to and during the investigation, and his apparent closeness to a suspicious girl; actions that put him right at the top of the list of suspects.Penny, a master at creating mysterious plots takes the reader on a journey of puzzling activity. It doesn’t seem likely that Gamache, the beloved central characterof her most successful mysteries would be involved in a murder but the story creates doubt in the reader’s mind and poses the question of how will he extricate himself from the suspicion.Many characters in the novel have long standing roles in the Gamache series, many others surface, and all are unique in their participation. The author is adept in developing her characterizations with their various eccentricities. It’s not likely they will become bosom buddies with the reader but they will be unforgettable. Their roles add depth to the exciting and perplexing story. Some are pompous, some are officious, some are eccentric, some are disrespectful, some are distasteful; but their oddities add surprise as the investigation unfolds.Penny has a great website that invites close regard by visitors. All the usual entries are there, arranged in a manner that strongly encourages one to poke around. There are no secrets, Penny is loquacious and open, and the information is intriguing. Extensive detailing of her books and an impressive listing of her awards attest to her writing skills. One could, and should, spend hours there reviewing her thoughts and the details of her many mystery novels. Particularly touching is her tribute to her late husband, the driving force behind her devotion and sensitive approach to life.I admire Louise Penny and her love of writing. I also consider her to be a thoughtful and caring person with an immaculate mind and knack for telling stories. Does Gamache wriggle out of his dilemma? You know the answer to that. What you don’t know is the inventive scheme developed by the author to make it all happen. Read the book.Schuyler T WallaceAuthor of TIN LIZARD TALES

Reading one of Louise Penny's Armand Gamache mysteries is like receiving a warm embrace from a much-loved old friend. It is comfort reading of the highest order.A Great Reckoning is the twelfth entry in the series. I've read them all - in order, of course. There are none of them that I haven't enjoyed, though some naturally are better than others, but this, in my opinion, is one of the best.Armand Gamache spent years as the head of homicide in the Sûreté du Québec, and during that time, he discovered that his agency was riddled with corruption. The venality of a powerful cadre within the Sûreté had created an atmosphere of cruelty and criminality that had cost it the trust and respect of the public. Gamache made it his crusade to clean up the agency and once again make it worthy of public trust. He accomplished his goal, but it almost cost him his life.He retired from the Sûreté and he and his wife went to live in the little village of Three Pines where he healed from his wounds and where he eventually became bored and began looking for something to do.He was offered several different jobs but the one that appealed to him was that of commandant of the Sûreté's academy. Realizing that his quest was not truly complete until the academy, too, was purged of bad actors and influences, he accepted the task, and in this book, we see him beginning that new role.His wife is happy that he will be working at the academy where she believes he will be safe. Little does she know!Gamache dismisses many of the academy's staff and hires new instructors, but, curiously, he leaves the most brutal and corrupt professor in place. He hopes to gather enough evidence on the man to finally put him away for good and, at the same time, identify the brains behind the operation, a person he believes is someone outside the Sûreté.But soon that corrupt professor is found dead in his room, a victim of a highly staged murder. Suspicion falls initially upon some of the cadets he had brutalized, but then comes to rest on Gamache himself.Meanwhile, back in Three Pines, the villagers, including Madame Gamache, are busy sorting through desiccated newspapers, catalogs, magazines, and other papers that were stuffed into the walls of what is now the bistro as insulation a century earlier. The papers were pulled out and saved during a renovation. How this endeavor somehow connects up with events at the academy is at the heart of this story of lost innocence - the innocence of the village's sons who marched off to war a century before and never came home and the betrayed innocence of academy cadets, some of whom seem at first glance not very innocent at all.As always with Penny's crime novels, this is very much a character-driven story. We get to know the characters with all their flaws and humanity and they engage our emotions so completely that we feel as though we could reach out and touch them. It is the complexities of the relationships that makes it all so real and that makes the reader eager to keep turning those pages to find out what will happen next. We are involved in the plot which Penny weaves together seamlessly.And at the center of all this is Armand Gamache, surely one of the most humane and human of policemen in all of crime fiction. He understands that kindness is not weakness and that love trumps hate. At the same time, he is implacable as he pursues the evil that pollutes his beloved Sûreté and that has infected the minds of some of the cadets who are the future of the agency.Then, of course, there are all the quirky Three Pines characters that we've come to know and love over the years: the cranky old poet, the bookstore owner, the gay couple who own and run the bistro, the acclaimed artist, and all the rest. Even the dogs.This is a story that is full of wisdom, forgiveness, kindness, and, yes, grief. It is an absorbing read and it is with regret that one turns that last page. The warm embrace ends and one must return to the cold reality of the world and all of its frustrations and irritations.

I'd give this book 10 stars if I could. Louise Penny is a wonderful writer, and I think this is her masterpiece. It is rich in character and nuance and just mesmerizing. Her novels are my catnip. I don't so much read her books as submerge myself in them. I can't explain how she does this except to say that she chooses her words carefully, builds a hypnotic story, and creates in the village of Three Pines a mystic place, not on any map - almost a modern-day Brigadoon.Several reviewers have noted that this is a stand alone book, and it is in the sense that there is a contained story, but I would argue that reading this book without having read at least some of the previous books is a mistake. Without the background, the echoes of meaning in this book are lost and the reading experience has to suffer. Louise Penny spends almost no time giving background material in her novels - she assumes you know. I've found Penny's later books to have a strong undercurrent of sadness. In this book, where so much of the story is about memory and memories, the sadness is like a veil through which the whole narrative is seen. One of the lessons of the novel is that life hands us situations, many of which are painful but we decide how they impact our future. Much of the book explores how choices compel other choices, but also how each character has the opportunity to make a new choice, a better choice and change their lives, overcome failure and bitterness and find forgiveness. In the end this is a deeply hopeful book.Louise Penny is usually considered in the class of traditional mystery writers like P.D. James and Dorothy Sayers. This is only partly true. Her books began as traditional mysteries. Still Life, her first, is a good mystery novel with interesting characters. As time went on however and her power as a novelist grew her books changed. Though they remained in the mystery genre her books have really become studies of character in a crime setting. As a writer of character and mood there is no one to touch her in the mystery field today. It didn't happen overnight, but today she is a superb novelist who happens to write about a policeman, Armand Gamache. I've read many wonderful mysteries in my life, many fine novels, but I have never read anyone in contemporary fiction with the depth and power Louise Penny brings to her best stories. Her books are luminous. Read book one: Still Life, and then read all of her other books - she will take you on a wonderful journey.

I was introduced to this series in August of 2015, just after book #11 had been published. In the 6 months that followed, I read the entire series 6 times, and saw different nuances in the books every time. I read it a 7th time in preparation for this release, but didn't time it right to be able to read A Great Reckoning *on* the 30th. Next time, Ms Penny, I'll get the timing right (if there is a next time; this one ended pretty cleanly, and I could see you stopping here) . [I really want to say "please don't stop writing" here, but that just seems rude.]The reason for the 4 star rating . . . the town of Notre-Dame-de-Roof-Trusses was on a map Gamache used for navigation in, I don't remember, book 1 or 2, maybe 3. The red barn with "Roof Trusses" painted on the roof was noted in their trip. For me, even minor details like this need to be "right" in later books, and Ms. Penny tends to skew many of her minor details from book to book. There were a number of jarring "off-note" things like this throughout the book, even when the minor detail being remembered was actually kind of important to the story and the history of the characters.So, this book. Holy cow. What an emotional roller-coaster ride! Almost as heart wrenching as books 6 and 9! Some elements of this story I was able to predict after reading the short description of the book some months ago. I was not disappointed! Other elements were a total surprise. And again, I was not disappointed. The writing is so engaging, the story so intriguing, and much loved characters just continue to grow and evolve. This is a world I a can return to (and get lost in!) again and again, and never get bored with it.I want to go on and on, just writing my thoughts and impressions on this book, but I'd totally end up spoiling it, so I will restrain myself. I really need to learn how to write better reviews! What I've said here simply does not do justice to the depth, complexity, and humanity of Ms. Penny's works.