A series going way off the mark and steering into an entirely different territory. Skip it…
Glass Houses by Louise Penny opens with Armand Gamache, newly appointed Chief Superintendent of the Surete du Quebec, in the witness box to testify in a murder trial, a case where the guilt or innocence of the defendant is of the least concern considering the bigger things are at stake in the long run. Far away from the stifling courtroom in Montreal, the readers are taken back to the previous year’s cold November in the village of Three Pines where the residents witnessed a sudden appearance of a masked figure on the village green during the annual Halloween party at the local bistro. The figure is a “corbrado,” a collector of debts. In Spain, a corbrado is dressed in coat and tails and follows a debtor to shame him. But this corbrado in Three Pines is more ancient, and instead of collecting financial debts, he collects moral debts. After the hooded figure is found dead, Gamache soon learns there is a link between the murder in Three Pines and his investigation of a deadly drug cartel. The book is usual Three Pines: bathed with a distinctive Penny tone—exceedingly good Gamache, a few eccentric characters, touching verses of poetry, and a comforting sense of community. But the reader who became a fan of Penny’s Three Pines series initially because of its simple old-fashioned story of the murder investigation in a picturesque sleepy village of Quebec might find it challenging to go through this book as Penny, here, has advanced her plot to another level; drug cartels and mafia (in her last book—The Great Reckoning, it was the discovery of a huge war canon). It would be best if Penny leaves the quirky and lovable characters, and the cozy atmosphere of Three Pines behind for good and pick a new gloomy setting better suited to her recent plots of war canons, drugs, and mafia.
