In 1989, a young Armand Gamache was on the scene of a mass slaying when 14 women were killed at Montreal's École Polytechnique. It changed his life and propelled him into a career in homicide. Ten years later, while investigating Clotilde Arsenault's murder, Gamache recruited an angry, undisciplined officer, Jean-Guy Beauvoir. Both events trigger current events in 2019. Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, took Clotilde's daughter, Fiona, under their wing, although she and her brother, Sam, were involved in their mother's death. After Fiona graduates from the École Polytechnique, she and Sam head to Three Pines. Gamache sees an evil in Sam that he only ever saw in a serial killer in prison for life. However, it's a mysterious painting, bricked up in a house in Three Pines, that sends Gamache on a search into the past, looking into his own heart for the fears that threaten the people he loves. With newcomers to Three Pines, the Arsenaults' history, and the secrets hidden behind the wall, danger is closer than Gamache imagines. VERDICT Penny's 18th Gamache novel (after All the Devils Are Here) is intense as the detective digs deep into his own fears. The darkness in this intricately plotted story forces readers to search for contrasting moments of hope.--Lesa Holstine

Bestseller Penny's virtuoso 18th novel featuring Chief Insp. Armand Gamache of the Québec Sûreté (after 2021's The Madness of Crowds) blends nuanced characterization with nail-biting suspense. Siblings Fiona and Sam Arsenault return to Three Pines more than a decade after Gamache investigated the bludgeoning murder of their mother, Clotilde. His inquiry revealed that Clotilde had prostituted her children, then 13 and 10, at the time of the killing. During the case, he met his future number two and son-in-law, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, who came to a different conclusion than his own. Gamache stayed involved in Fiona's life, even aiding her graduate studies in engineering. The Arsenaults' arrival coincides with several murders, which seem connected to an unusual painting found concealed in a hidden room in Three Pines. It first appears to be a duplicate of The Paston Treasure, a cryptic 17th-century assemblage of items known as A World of Curiosities, but anachronistic elements, such as a digital watch, have been added. Penny adds crucial details about Gamache's backstory and satisfactorily resolves a plotline tease from earlier in the series. This tale of forgiveness and redemption will resonate with many. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company. (Nov.)

Two apparently unrelated events in the village of Three Pines thrust Armand Gamache, head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec, deep into the past, leading to a confrontation with personal demons, internal and external. The first event is the appearance in the village of Sam and Fiona Arsenault, the children of a mother who abused them and whose murder was investigated by Gamache. Questions have remained for more than a decade about the roles of the children in their mother's death. Then a long-bricked-up room is discovered in the village, and when it's opened, a strange painting is found: a copy of a seventeenth-century masterpiece, The Paston Treasure, in which modern details and shorthand-like codes have been added to the original. Is the painting a veiled message to Gamache, a harbinger of approaching horror? To derail the onrushing demons, Gamache and his colleagues must burrow into a world of both curiosities and "festering secrets," remembering that "there is always another story . . . more than meets the eye." Finally, what they find, Gamache reflects, is like a story from the Brothers Grimm, "a tale of demons and witches, hidden rooms and unexpected saviors." 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.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Through 18 installments, the Gamache series has become a crime-fiction phenomenon, a favorite of readers across every category.

Welcome to Three Pines, the idyllic-seeming Canadian capital of murder. At the heart of Penny's series of mysteries set in the tiny Quebec town of Three Pines is the relationship between Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, the empathetic and capable head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec, and his headstrong second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, now also his son-in-law. Gamache has a talent for finding officers who've been languishing in their previous jobs and turning them into trusted allies, and Penny has frequently mentioned the way Beauvoir had been "banished to the basement" in an out-of-the-way bureau and that there was something "lean and feral…something dangerous" about him before Gamache swooped in and brought him to the homicide squad. Now, in her 18th installment, Penny flashes back to the case that brought the two men together. A woman named Clotilde Arsenault has been found dead in a remote lake, and Gamache shows up at the local detachment to investigate the case himself. Clotilde had two children, 13-year-old Fiona and Sam, 10, and it turns out she had been prostituting them. In the book's present-day strand, Fiona is graduating from college after having served time in prison for killing her mother; Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, have supported her, almost folding her into their own family, but they've never trusted Sam, who will also be at the graduation ceremony. This chapter in Penny's chronicle of Three Pines contains all the elements that she sometimes divides up between different books: There's a cozy-feeling present-day mystery concerning a hidden room Fiona discovers by looking at the roofline of Myrna's bookstore, and the strange painting found inside; the harrowing story of how Gamache and Beauvoir cracked the case of Clotilde's murder; and a story of corruption within the institutions that are supposed to be protecting us. The plotting is complex and the characters as vivid as ever, but the opportunity to watch Gamache and Beauvoir's relationship develop is what makes this book one of Penny's best. Penny will have you turning the pages as fast as you can to see how she'll manage to tie everything together. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.