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.
Audiobooks