Today

Today is always a mystery 

Plans that I have, routines that are 

~ well, routine ~ 

get shifted unceremoniously with 

a phone call, 

an email that needs answering, 

or the sun calls me out to play. 

Because I reside in each moment, 

to ignore these mysteries would be rude.

Or perhaps, like today, the mystery was 

Why has this day been so unwrinkled?

There was a time ~ maybe yesterday ~ 

when, if my rigid rhythm had gone awry,

I would have been annoyed.

Today, I allow the mystery to wrap around me.

“Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be.”

~ Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

Book Review: The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny

Author’s note: This mystery novel is indeed beautiful. I reread it again this year while working on a project. Needing a refresher for my over worked brain and a different puzzle to solve I choose this book at random. Having run out of time and inspiration, I turned to a second repost of this novel by Louise Penny.

~~~~~

It’s been ten years since I read The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny. Fortunately, I’ve read a lot of books in those ten years. The mystery was just as fascinating now as it was then. Even more so! It began centuries before when far away monks had resurrected Plainchant in their music. The written works were disputed and findings suppressed by the Church. Most monasteries had their own books of the beautiful music of Plainchant, but where was the original. 

Being ferried across a quiet lake to a monastery hidden deep in a Québec forest begins another mystery. The boatman was sceptical about all the equipment that Inspector Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir brought with them when he knew that no one was ever admitted to the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. Twenty four monks lived within its stone walls constructed by monks escaping the Inquisition centuries before. Behind the heavy oaken door of the monastery was a murder. The musical director and prior, Frére Mathieu, had been found in the abbot’s garden. The abbott recognized the significance of Frére Mathieu’s brutal death and contacted the police. Gamache knew they would be admitted and over the next days investigated all the suspects. All the monks. Gamache and Beauvoir, his second in command and trusted colleague, studied the monastery, looked at plans, attended services, ate with the monks and found the fracture in the community. Only one person interrupted the investigation - the Chief Superintendent of the Surête, Sylvain Francoeur. He arrived unannounced with his own agenda. The friction between Gamache and Francoeur was an old one and was not resolved but escalated. The mystery of the Monastery was solved, but the old friction between Gamache and Francoeur remained. In reading my review of 2014, some members of my book club were unhappy with the book’s ending. I thought some characters were unnecessary, but at this reading I disagree. Each character had his place in the mystery. I have included that review on this post.

I hope to read many more of Louise Penny’s books, several that are on my bookshelves and the many others in the Inspector Gamache series. This re-read held me fast as the Louise Penny told me the history of Plainchants and the monastery, led me down solid stone halls of the monastery, showed me the beautiful music of Plainchants, and the architecture that allowed dancing prisms of light to float through the high windows. 

~~~~~

Review from January 14, 2014

A brutal murder occurs. In a beautiful old monastery deep in Québec.  Not just any monastery, but a closed monastery with a vow of silence. Silence was only broken during services when Gregorian chants were sung. It is in the music that the mystery develops. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the Surête du Quebec unravel this mystery. They have come out of their usual community of Three Pines, with completely new characters. The monks and their lives are completely foreign to the two officers, especially to Inspector Beauvoir.

Not all of our book group members were completely pleased with Louise Penny’s novel, missing the characters from Three Pines. A first reader of Louise Penny, the concept of a murder in a monastery was fascinating. Openings to a solution appear and then disappear in the twists and turns that follow the halls and rooms of the old monastery. And, although certain characters seemed unnecessary, I enjoyed this Beautiful Mystery.

“To be honest, the only thing I ever really wanted to be 

was a writer - since I read “Charlotte’s Web” as a child.”

~ Louise Penny

Title: The Beautiful Mystery

Author: Louise Penny

Copyright: 2012

Publisher: Three Pines Creations Inc.

Type: Mystery fiction

Format: Soft Cover

ISBN - 978-0-312-65546-4 (hard cover)

ISBN - 978-1-250-01527-3 (ebook)

ISBN - 978-1-250-03112 (trade paperback)

Book Review: The English Patient

There is only one story in this book. A story of how war damages people and how they survive. Four people come together in an Italian villa just as World War II has ended. The English patient who was burned beyond recognition. His real name is a mystery throughout novel. He is the main narrator in a morphine filled haze. Hana, a young woman, who had been a nurse in field hospitals full of the never ending dead, dying and injured, feeds him and cares for him, gives him the morphine to ease the pain of his scarred burns. From Toronto, she goes through each day in the routines she learned in this broken land, and misses home. The villa they were in had been a field hospital. 

All patients and staff left to a better location but Hana and the English patient refused to leave. Caravaggio, also Canadian and an old friend of Hana’s father, arrived after he learned of Hana’s whereabouts. He had been a thief and pickpocket before the war and became part of the secret spy world. Tortured and both thumbs removed, he was also addicted to morphine. The fourth person in this single story was Kirpal Singh, nicknamed Kip as a joke, part of a team of sappers. Sappers that defused the thousands of bombs that had been laid by the Germans during the war and on their retreat. 

So each story within the single story of devastation and always potential death, is woven into the other until they become their own unit. But never really together in their minds and hearts. The English patient takes us on many treks through the desert and an impatient love he had in that lost time. Kip’s job doesn’t stop. Michael Ondaatje describes the meticulous, focussed actions of this young man. How and where he learned about bomb defusing. The daily danger that he puts out of his mind to solve the puzzle of the next bomb. Ondaatje also describes beautiful scenes of the sharing of human touch, sometimes love making, sometimes just being together. There is much beauty in the relationships that do blossom out of that need for the human touch. There are games that they play. Hana reads books to the English patient. One belonging to him, but some from a bombed out library of books in the villa. Caravaggio does not seem to have a place in the story which may be because of the life he had always lived in shadows. Never really there, but being present. One name keeps cropping up: Almásy. A master spy that no one could catch. The end of this story comes over Kip’s radio phones. The radio phones that kept him away from the world while he worked in a pit, or in an ordinary room, to diffuse a bomb that could kill. 

Were any medical issues believable? The severe burns, the physical care that would be required, and the amount and availability of morphine. Not to my mind, but I was able to discount all of these for the sake of the story. The reality of the destruction to not just the land and homes, but to the minds and spirits of those involved in war. This single story is a beautiful metaphor of the lives of four people: The English Patient, Hana, Caravaggio and Kirpal Singh.

“A novel is a mirror walking down a road.”

~ Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

Title: The English Patient

Author: Michael Ondaatje

Copyright: 1992

Publisher: Vintage Books Canada

Format: Soft Cover

Type: Novel

ISBN: o-394-28013-x

ISBN: 9780307700872 (hard cover)

ISBN: 9780676514209 (Paper back)

Book Review: The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny

It’s been ten years since I read The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny. Fortunately, I’ve read a lot of books in those ten years. The mystery was just as fascinating now as it was then. Even more so! It began centuries before when monks had resurrected Plainchant in their music. The written works were disputed and findings suppressed by the Church. Most monasteries had their own books of the beautiful music of Plainchant, but where was the original? 

Being ferried across a quiet lake to a monastery hidden deep in a Québec forest begins another mystery. The boatman was sceptical about all the equipment that Inspector Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir brought with them when he knew that no one was ever admitted to the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups. Twenty four monks lived within its stone walls constructed by monks escaping the Inquisition centuries before. Behind the heavy oaken door of the monastery was a murder. The musical director and prior, Frére Mathieu, had been found in the abbot’s garden. The abbott recognized the significance of Frére Mathieu’s brutal death and contacted the police. Gamache knew they would be admitted and over the next days investigated all the suspects. All the monks. Gamache and Beauvoir, his second in command and trusted colleague, studied the monastery, looked at plans, attended services, ate with the monks and found the fracture in the community. Only one person interrupted the investigation - the Chief Superintendent of the Surête, Sylvain Francoeur. He arrived unannounced with his own agenda. The friction between Gamache and Francoeur was an old one and was not resolved but escalated. The mystery of the Monastery was solved, but the old friction between Gamache and Francoeur remained. In reading my review of 2014, some members of my book club were unhappy with the book’s ending. I thought some characters were unnecessary, but at this reading I disagree. Each character had his place in the mystery. I have included that review on this post.

I hope to read many more of Louise Penny’s books, several that are on my bookshelves and the many others in the Inspector Gamache series. This re-read held me fast as the Louise Penny told me the history of Plainchants and the monastery, led me down solid stone halls of the monastery, showed me the beautiful music of Plainchants, and the architecture that allowed dancing prisms of light to float through the high windows. 

~~~~~

Review from January 14, 2014

A brutal murder occurs. In a beautiful old monastery deep in Québec.  Not just any monastery, but a closed monastery with a vow of silence. Silence was only broken during services when Gregorian chants were sung. It is in the music that the mystery develops. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the Surête du Quebec unravel this mystery. They have come out of their usual community of Three Pines, with completely new characters. The monks and their lives are completely foreign to the two officers, especially to Inspector Beauvoir.

Not all of our book group members were completely pleased with Louise Penny’s novel, missing the characters from Three Pines. A first reader of Louise Penny, the concept of a murder in a monastery was fascinating. Openings to a solution appear and then disappear in the twists and turns that follow the halls and rooms of the old monastery. And, although certain characters seemed unnecessary, I enjoyed this Beautiful Mystery.

“To be honest, the only thing I ever really wanted to be 

was a writer - since I read “Charlotte’s Web” as a child.”

~ Louise Penny

Title: The Beautiful Mystery

Author: Louise Penny

Copyright: 2012

Publisher: Three Pines Creations Inc.

Type: Mystery fiction

Format: Soft Cover

ISBN - 978-0-312-65546-4 (hard cover)

ISBN - 978-1-250-01527-3 (ebook)

ISBN - 978-1-250-03112 (trade paperback)

Book Review: Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny

Some readers loved, some disliked The Kingdom of the Blind. Those that liked it were in the majority. I finished reading this mystery two weeks ago, so needed to review some reviews. Set in Three Pines, Québec in winter, the very snowscape enhances the mystery. A farmhouse is where Gamache, Myrna and Benedict meet the lawyer Monsieur Mercier. That farmhouse eventually falls down.

In the main, I enjoyed this fourth novel, but not in order of publication dates. Each work stands on its own. Three Pines, the tiny village where Armand Gamache lives with his wife, Reine-Marie and their two dogs is a safe haven, but murder seems to follow him there! This time the murder took place in that falling down farmhouse, some distance from Three Pines. But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

Armand and his neighbour Myrna Landers had each received letters notifying them that they were Liquidators of the will of Bertha Baumgartner. (Liquidators of wills in Québec are the equivalent of a Power of Attorney in the rest of Canada.) Neither of them know this woman but will learn of her convoluted and possibly delusion family history. A third man has also been sent the same letter: Benedict Pouliot, according to his business card is a Builder. He doesn’t know this woman either. Their first task is to contact the lawyer Laurence Mercier to begin sorting out this first mystery. Mrs. Baumgartner, known to all as Baroness, is in fact a cleaning lady. But a cleaning lady whose title and family inheritance goes back over 150 years to Europe. Money, legalities and big business are knotted together.

A second mystery, leading from Glass Houses published in 2017, is still unwinding. Gamache has been suspended from the Suréte because of his decisions related to a large shipment of carfentanyl. Most of it had been apprehended, but a large portion had been diverted into Montréal. One of his young agents, Amelia Choquet had apparently gone rogue and had to be ejected from the Academy for possession of drugs. Previously actively addicted, she returned to the streets of Montréal and began a search for the loose carfentanyl. This did not help his position. In the meantime, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, Gamaches’ second in command and his son-in-law, had been elevated into the role of Acting Head of Homicide. Beauvoir is stuck between his superiors and his wife and children and his father-in-law while juggling these two cases.

Louise Penny artfully keeps this story line, while bringing the residents of Three Pines along with Gamache. The Bistro is the meeting place for much conversation and good food. Mysteries solved amid laughter and camaraderie. A place of ease for both the resident and the reader.

“The mess in the drawers was in contrast to the neat desktop. 

Many people’s lives were like that. The neat room and 

the messy closet, the well-ordered counters 

and the chaos in the cabinets.”

~ Louise Penny,  Kingdom of the Blind

Title: The Kingdom of the Blind

Author: Louise Penny

Copyright: 2018

Publisher: by Three Pines Creations

Type: Novel

Format: Mystery Fiction

ISBN - 978125002206 (hard cover)

ISBN - 9781250313522 (international, sold outside the U.S., subject to rights availability)

ISBN - 9781466873698 (ebook)

LCCN - 2010227731

Book Review: State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny

When I start a book, I don’t usually flip to read the Acknowledgments at the back. This time, I was curious about the authors. How does a political figure and a mystery writer, both well known in their fields, collaborate? Both with completely different styles of writing and at a distance. The answer: successfully. Clintons knowledge of the machinations of global politics and Penny’s skill with her mystery series created a fascinating ride through political intrigue. Truly a State of Terror. 

President Douglas Williams has chosen Ellen Adams for the position of Secretary of State. Previously founding and running a powerful media empire for decades, she and the President definitely do not see eye to eye. An odd appointment but it kept Ellen where the President thought he could control her. She had published unfavourably about him in the past. As the story progresses, her Foreign Service Officer, Anahita Dahir, received a strange text that was initially ignored as spam by one of her superiors, but she did keep a copy. Realizing its importance she pushes past security agents to get the message to her boss. Bus bombings occur in France, Germany and the U.K. that are related to this cryptic message. The terror is that there are more to come, but where and who is responsible! From Washington, D.C. to Oman to Pakistan to Moscow, Ellen Adams, Secretary of State meets with all of the heads of state. She confronts these powerful men with what little she knows and asks questions she wants answered. Seldom alone, she keeps security people close in all of these incredibly dangerous situations. She also keeps her close friend and counsellor, Betsy Jameson with her at all times, or on the other end of her video phone. There are strong female characters are throughout this story, not always on the side of the good guys.

It could be easy to translate this work of fiction into the recent political atmosphere in the U.S. That being said, this story goes much deeper than any political news reports of the day. In her travels, Ellen Adams not only confronts powerful men, but has to respect cultural and political protocols in each country, some related to women and their garb.

Throughout this story of intrigue, there are references to mythological stories like Gilgamesh, a Persian children’s story about the cat and the rat, and the poet John Donne (1572 - 1631). Having read several of Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series, I could see her hand in the crafting of this book. Spoiler alert: Inspector Gamache and the village of Three Pines play roles in the latter part of this tale of political intrigue and murder.

“This is a work of  fiction but the story it tells is all too timely. 

It’s up to us to make sure its plot stays fictional.”

~ Hillary Rodham Clinton, State of Terror

Title: State of Terror

Author: Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny

Copyright: 2021 by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Three Pines Creations

Publisher: Simon & Schuster and St. Martin’s Press

Type: Fiction

Format: Novel

ISBN - 978-1-9821-7367-8

Book Review: A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny

 A World of Curiosities opens in the small village of Three Pines. A safe and secure place from the gruelling gritty work of murder investigation. What ghosts could interfere with that place of refuge for the Chief Inspector? Then, on the shores of cold Lac Plongeon, the body of Clotilde Arsenault, half out of the water, was discovered by two hikers. 

Chief Inspector Gamache was a curiosity to Agent Jean-Guy Beauvoir. Banished to the basement of the Suréte by his superior, Jean-Guy was ensconced in a cramped office going through petty crime files. The Inspector brought this trouble maker up to work with him on a most difficult case. It was a pretty rocky start that became a solid working relationship. The Chief Inspector, as young Agent Gamache, had had his own frightening beginnings when his detachment was called to the scene of the Montréal Massacre at the École Polytechnique Murders. It was the place and time where his dislike of firearms grew.

The Chief Inspector, always curious and respectful about each person murdered, cared about their circumstances and their families. His empathy for the two children left without their mother was soon deepened when he learns of their circumstances. And their participation in unspeakable crimes. Where was their father? Thirteen and ten, they were completely traumatized, not only at the loss of their mother, but by their upbringing. Gamache was drawn to young Fiona, while Jean-Guy was drawn to her younger brother, Sam. Both children would play pivotal parts in this mystery.

Years later two women connected to murders, but with very divergent lives, would come together on the same graduation stage. Gamache knew both women well ~ one woman, Harriet, from Three Pines and one woman, Fiona, from prison. Louise Penny takes us through the many leads that her protagonist must follow ~ the dead ends, the questions that seem unanswerable, the people that are suspect. She takes us into a hidden room, bricked off centuries before, hiding a painting. At first glance the painting seems to be the famous The Paston Treasure. But it couldn’t be to be in this hidden room. It is deemed to be a forgery and has included clues for Gamache and his team to decipher. 

In her Acknowledgements, Louise Penny writes that, in The World of Curiosities, she studies the theme of forgiveness. Forgiveness sought and forgiveness given.

“There’s always another story/There is more than meets the eye.”

~ Louise Penny, The World of Curiosities

Title: A World of Curiosities

Author: Louise Penny

Copyright: 2022

Publisher: Minotaur Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group

Type: Hard cover

Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction

Format: Series: Chief Inspector Gamache Novel

ISBN: 9781250145291 (hard cover)

LCCN: 2022033302

ISBN: 9781250145314 (ebook)

Book Review: Glass Houses by Louise Penny

“Burn our ships” Whatever could that mean? Three words written on a napkin gleaned from a casual comment over a luncheon with a colleague Chief Superintendent Armand Gamache took that note and locked it in his desk drawer. Along with it was a notebook with his plan to do what?

The story opens in a courtroom without air conditioning. Gamache is a witness, after the fact, for the prosecution. The Chief Crown Prosecutor Barry Zalmanowitz is grilling him about the facts surrounding the murder in Three Pines. The two men intensely dislike each other. Judge Corriveau sees a tension between the men that she doesn’t understand. Gamache’s plan, that had yet to be fully revealed, would never have been approved, because it involved illegalities on the part of the Chief Superintendent. His purpose was to protect the public.

Home to his wife, Reine-Marie in Three Pines, he was content to live a quiet life. Three Pines, not even on the map and very out of the way, had few visitors. It was the night of the annual Hallowe’en party. Every one knew everyone except for the tall person all dressed in a long hooded black costume. He - or she - never spoke. When everyone went home and continued on their lives, the hooded figure reappeared in the morning in the village green to stand silently, ominously looking steadily toward the bistro. The bistro was a cozy gathering place for the residents. With each day that passed, the hooded figure never moving, tension mounted in the village. Research done by Beauvoir revealed that this figure was consistent with the Spanish history of a cobrador del frac. A frock coated collector of debts in reality, but developed by Louise Penny as a conscience. This figure was confronted once by an angry villager, but Gamache stopped him, saying that standing on the green was not illegal. The village grew nervous and afraid, not knowing what they should fear. Gamache, his second in command and son-in-law, Chief Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir kept a close eye on this spectre who was doing no harm. 

The two officers of the Sûreté were distracted by a much greater problem. The escalating problem of opiates being funnelled through Québec.Yet when Reine-Marie Gamache discovers the body of a woman in the basement of the church, the story takes on a different urgency. Viciously murdered and beaten, she was dressed in the hooded robe of the cobrador. A bloody bat was found leaned up again a basement wall by the Sûreté. Only when Reine-Marie privately tells her husband that there was no bat when she discovered the body, did Gamache become suspicious.

From the quiet scenic village to an all out drug war, Louise Penny took us slowly, almost painfully, into Gamache’s plan. What was the person in black? Who would be murdered and who was the killer? Why was Three Pines chosen as the narrow end of the funnel for drug runners?

Would Chief Superintendent Gamache jeopardize his carrier, the career of others and the lives of many addicts to achieve this goal? Would it be worth it or should he have not followed his conscience? In the courtroom, would Judge Corriveau have him arrested and jailed?

Drug cartels and the underworld, the supposed incompetence of the Sûreté and who survived. History of rum running and today’s world of running drugs. Louise Penny fit it all together quite snugly. Armand Gamache is her main character in a series of mystery novels from 2005 to the present. This is only the second of her books that I’ve read. Time to read her others!

“It wasn’t really, he knew, about less fear. It was about more courage,”

~ Louise Penny, Glass Houses

Author:Louise Penny

Copyright: 2017

Publisher: Three Pines Creations, Inc.

For information, address:

 St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

Type: Novel

Format: Hard cover

ISBN: 97801250066190

LCCN: 2017021224

ISBN (international): 978125064889

ISBN (ebook): 9781466873681