"...He’s spending most of his time in some small village in the Townships, and when he’s not there he’s distracted by Beauvoir. It’s too late. He can’t stop it now. Besides, he doesn’t even know what’s happening.” [p. 190]
Culmination of the arc that began in Bury Your Dead, or perhaps earlier: perhaps all the way back to Still Life, the first of the Gamache novels. Luckily, it is not the last of the series: but I feel I can relax and take a breath now.
This novel is set some months after the events of The Beautiful Mystery. Beauvoir has gone to work for Francoeur, Gamache's nemesis, and is once more addicted to painkillers: his relationship has broken down, though he still parks his car outside his ex's flat to mourn. Gamache's Murder team is fragmented, with many agents reassigned or quitting. And there are at least three crimes under investigation here: the apparent suicide of a woman, the death of another woman who was the last survivor of a set of quintuplets, and a wicked conspiracy that dates back more than a decade, to one of Gamache's few failures. Gamache knows that he's being marginalised, and he knows, more or less, who he can still trust. He's not sure about Agent Yvette Nichol, but he and his allies need her help to hack into police and government records. Luckily, they can't easily be traced to Three Pines, where there's little internet and no mobile signal...
I will probably need to reread this (quelle domage) because I raced through the final third, barely pausing to marvel at the cinematographic brilliance of Penny's scene-cuts and structuring. Everything does come together in a shocking conclusion -- which, luckily, takes place in the penultimate chapter. The final chapter ties up quite a few loose threads, but is very definitely a new beginning for several of the characters. I'm looking forward to reading the next in the series ... but not quite yet.
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