THE MADNESS OF CROWDS

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and the village of Three Pines, Québec, emerge from the pandemic to confront something in its way even more monstrous.

It’s not clear entirely how the invitation was extended, but Colette Roberge, Chancellor of the Université de l’Estrie, is hosting her old friend professor Abigail Robinson, of the University of Western Canada, for a talk on statistics. That sounds dry until Gamache realizes that the numbers Robinson is crunching concern the benefits that would accrue around the world if the powers that be launched a wholesale campaign of mercy killing that targeted the old, the sick, and the helpless. The subject is guaranteed to polarize audiences violently even as the endorsements Robinson is seeking from politicians and other influencers approach a tipping point at which her radical ideas might seem reasonable, even tenable. The capacity crowd crammed into an old gym to hear the talk is already rowdy when someone sets off a string of firecrackers and someone fires a gun, narrowly missing the speaker. The inevitable murder that follows on the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve strikes painful chords in everyone from young Sudanese activist Haniya Daoud, whose sufferings have left her filled with rage and disdain for the human race, to Gamache’s sidekick and son-in-law, Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir, who’s coping with his complicated feelings toward his baby daughter, Idola, who was born with Down syndrome, to thoracic surgeon Vincent Gilbert, the Asshole Saint hiding a dark secret that portends all the other secrets Gamache must toil to uncover and determine which of them is responsible for this post-pandemic nightmare.

No one balances tight plotting, compassion for her flawed characters, and a broader vision of humanity like Penny.