From her basket of recurring themes, Penny choses in A World of Curiosities to focus on the sometimes unintended impact of art and literature on emotions and actions, and the potential for good and evil to exist in any individual, no matter how well one or the other may be hidden. As with many of the series' books that are set in the tiny village of Three Pines, this one includes a blend of the all-too-real-world with what seems to be a vaguely magical-realism-world.

In this book we learn that Gamache first met Jean-Guy at an outlying Sûreté station when Gamache was investigating the murder of a woman named Clothilde Arsenault. Agent Beauvoir - whose behavior verged on insubordination - had been relegated to a desk job in the department's basement, but Gamache saw something in the young man and made him part of the Sûreté homicide squad. Fiona Arsenault has turned her life around, gaining an engineering degree thanks to the support of Gamache and his wife. But the Chief has always felt uneasy about her younger brother, Sam. Everyone else is charmed by this handsome young man but Garmache fears there is a dark, malicious streak in his nature. His intuition tells him to be on his guard while Sam is in Three Pines. A WORLD OF CURIOSITIES is filled with misdirection and red herrings at every turn, even though the clues are there. Even though one instinctively knows, at least hopes, everything will be alright, the suspense is such that the end may engender tears of relief. The reader is so invested in the characters, one experiences their pain, fear, and anger, but also their love. This is one of the most suspenseful books Penny has written and one that must have required a tremendous amount of research. It may also be one of her best. I enjoyed seeing the darker sides of Gamache. No human is a saint, we're all sinners. And not in any religious sense, we are by nature petty, jealous and vengeful - it's just that we contain this in different measures and some have so many more virtuous traits that their darker streaks rarely show. But they are there.As ever, my real interest in this novel is what lies beyond the plot and the characterisation. Louise Penny frequently introduces a key theme into her narrative to explore the darker side of human nature or to shine a light on a contemporary issue. In the past we’ve had jealousy, euthanasia, police corruption, prescription drug addiction and PTSD.

Electrifying drama … the bodies pile up, the intensity and horror are reminiscent of Thomas Harris at his finest. Gamache is a fascinatingly complex protagonist’ BOOK OF THE MONTH, THE TIMES So, it’s a lot, yeah, in a relatively short space. An elaborate, complicated (and/or bloated) plot, where Penny takes on the notion of “evil,” which she knows exists, and “insanity” and “lunatics” that have to be faced. Robert Bathurst performs this 18th Inspector Gamache mystery with the assurance of one who knows the village of Three Pines and its (mostly) gentle residents well....fans are in for a treat." - AudioFile Magazine (Earphones Award Winner) On first sight this appears to be a copy of The Paston Treasure, a priceless work known also as A World of Curiosities that dates from the 1600s. But on closer inspection the painting reveals some oddities — among the objects depicting life in the seventeenth century are modern day items like digital watches and model aeroplanes.a b c Cannon, Margaret (2023-01-13). "Review: Five mystery books to start the year with a thrill". The Globe and Mail . Retrieved 2023-03-26. This is my 17th Louise Penny. It should be my 18th but I did miss one when I first discovered this series and raced through many of the early books and now I can't quite figure out which one I missed or skipped when I could not get it in a timely manner from the library. Most have been on audio. She reuses the bad cops want to kill good cops as well as a an escape from prison due to corrupt jail warden. The killer is a psychopath who decapitates his victims. She repeatedly alludes to photos showing his horrific crimes, planting images in your mind. I’d rate most of them in the 3-4 star range: they’re engrossing but flawed. The series’ hero worship of Gamache is always too cloying, and it starts out strong in this novel with the narrator reminding us how good, kind, and honest Gamache is. Although he’s been exposed, as the head of homicide, to the worst of humanity, the novel tells us that Gamache remains hopeful, compassionate, and relatively emotionally healthy. I should add that he remains all this even when the series has taken some of the people closest to Gamache and turned them into murderers. For me, that’s a cheap and unrealistic plot device that the series overrelies on.

A World of Curiosities is Louise Penny's 18th novel in a series featuring the fictional character Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Louise Penny twists and turns the plot expertly tripping the reader up just at the moment you think you might have solved the mystery’ DAILY EXPRESS The book provides the reader with insights into the early career of inspector Gamache. [5] Critical reception [ edit ] It frothed up the already tumultuous lake, creating waves on the waves. Shoving the dead woman ever forward, offering her to Gamache. Insisting he take her.As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Sûreté du Québec investigators’ lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they’ve arrived in the village of Three Pines. Each anachronistic object is a message, a warning of a catastrophe with all the signs pointing to Gamache and his family as the target. While the community of Three Pines, Quebec is known for its bucolic nature, there are deeply troubling moments that emerge at the least opportune times. Armand Gamache and his son-in-law, reputable members of the Sûreté du Québec, have done well to keep the peace, but when two young people return to the area, it sends them into a tailspin of panic and memories. In her 18th book in the Inspector Gamache series, A World of Curiosities, Louise Penny gives us a look into Armand and Jean-Guy's "origin stories." In 1989 a young Armand Gamache was present at the real-life incident of a man killing 14 woman engineering students at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique, propelling him into a career in homicide. Ten years later Gamache recruits an angry, undisciplined officer, Jean-Guy Beauvior to help solve a murder. Both of these events have reverberations in the current timeline and bearing upon 3 more murders.

Never has this reviewer written such a long synopsis. Never has Penny written such a book where this long a synopsis was needed. This is not a bad thing. Anne Lamarque, a woman accused of being a witch in the 1670's, is honored as well as the 14 women slain in 1989 in Ruth's poem: This is Louise Penny’s best book—and what sort of series writer throws in their best book as the 18th entry? Probably the most amazing thing, and I believe the reason this book is so phenomenal, is that it is a book that wasn’t supposed to exist. Penny had told her publishers that, after releasing two books in 2021, she would not release one in 2022. And then inspiration hit. This is a hugely satisfying mystery of course, but more than that, it’s a chilling morality tale. Nobody does evil quite as scarily as Louise Penny’ ANN CLEEVES The 2022 crime mystery book follows the investigation into a series of murders in Quebec, and briefly references the real life 1989 École Polytechnique massacre.Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, head of the homicide department at Montreal's Sûreté du Québec..... For Penny, the novel is a narrative tour de force, drawing brilliantly on some dark moments in Québec history and leading Gamache and the residents of Three Pines to a hard-won, thoroughly unsentimental recognition that forgiveness is our most powerful magic.” — Booklist (starred review) First, the novel appears to be philosophically inconsistent. Unlike other detective fiction, Louise Penny’s books try to be serious about life, beauty, suffering, and death, even if they end up being terribly cavalier with the lives of side characters. With Gamache interpreting the world for us, we understand that good is powerful, that love can redeem relationships, and that trust, though often betrayed, is usually productive. Yet Gamache also says about a ten year old child that he was born bad and that circumstances made him unfixable. The novel tries to maintain through Fiona’s story that trauma produces traumatized behavior that can be redeemed, but then it also insists through Gamache’s instincts about Sam that an abused and neglected ten year old is forever someone to be suspicious of because he probably loves being bad. Fiona’s decision to betray and then to save the Gamache family is also left under-explored; she seemingly sacrifices the life she’s built for no reason other than family ties (as her father turns out to be serial killer John Fleming). The novel explains her decision to betray and then to help rescue Gamache in a throwaway line about having crossed too many lines. But murder was always the plan, and Fiona and Sam both seemed in on it. Why? And how? What were her lines? Treasures, from the 1860s (the original can be viewed online.) On further observation, there are some startling changes noticed in the painting. A woman is wearing a digital watch, and a model plane is depicted. There are almost imperceptible codes embedded in the picture implying vengeance. How is this possible in a room sealed off for more than a century?