Audiobooks
Glass Houses

by Louise Penny
Macmillan Audio, August 2017, $39.99

In her new novel featuring Armand Gamache, now Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté du Québec, Penny manages to combine a very old legend about the cobrador del frac, a masked, hooded, cloaked-in-black figure who collects debts, monetary and moral, with a fairly new problem, the opioid crisis. The plot primarily consists of flashback events bookended and triggered by a murder trial in Montreal in which Gamache is a witness for the prosecution. Penny immediately taunts us with a number of questions. Who’s the victim? Who’s on trial? And why is the prosecutor treating Gamache as if he were a hostile witness? The answers are parceled out during trips back several months to the cozy Canadian village of Three Pines where the superintendent and his wife, Reine-Marie, spend at least a portion of each novel in the series, enjoying the friendship of its charmingly eccentric citizens, like portraitist Clara Morrow, Gabri and Olivier, the bickering owners of the B&B, and, of course, the always angry old poet, Ruth Zardo, and her pet duck. This time Three Pines is far from carefree. A hooded man, identified by a visiting Spaniard as a cobrador, sits silent and unmoving on the village green, freaking out the townsfolk. Eventually, there is a murder. But more perplexing is Gamache’s odd behavior. With complaints of his ineptitude growing stronger, he seems to be making do-nothing decisions that add fuel to that fire. Could his obsession with the increasing dangers of opioids offer a clue? Bathurst, who became the series audio reader after the death of Ralph Cosham, continues to find vocal nuances serving Penny’s evolving characters. Here, he adds a large amount of determination to Gamache’s speech and a touch of concern and worry from his wife, friends, and associates as complaints of his inaction and ineptitude grow.

Dick Lochte

In her new novel featuring Armand Gamache, now Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté du Québec, Penny manages to combine a very old legend about the cobrador del frac, a masked, hooded, cloaked-in-black figure who collects debts, monetary and moral, with a fairly new problem, the opioid crisis.

Teri Duerr
5876
Penny
August 2017
glass-houses
39.99
Macmillan Audio