Book Review

The Morrows and a murder

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By Ande Jacobson

A Rule Against Murder is the fourth Chief Inspector Armand Gamache (of the Sûreté du Quebec) story by Canadian author Louise Penny first released in 2009. In Canada, the title was originally The Murder Stone which gives more away about the mystery from the outset. This time Armand and Reine-Marie are enjoying an anniversary trip to the luxurious Manoir Bellechasse, an inn in a lovely forested location not far from Three Pines. They had planned to enjoy the scenery and each other’s uninterrupted company in the peaceful old-world setting. The only other guests are the Finneys – a large, wealthy, multigenerational family there for their own celebration of sorts. Early on Irene Finney, the matriarch of the Finney family, and her adult children get the entirely wrong idea about the Gamaches thinking that Armand is a lowly shopkeeper, and Reine-Marie is a cleaning women when they misinterpret something that the Gamaches say in casual conversation. The Finneys are awaiting the wayward sibling and his wife, who surprisingly turn out to be Peter and Clara Morrow from Three Pines. Peter and Clara arrive the night before a statue of Irene’s first husband, Charles Morrow, is to be unveiled. It turns out that Bert Finney is Irene’s second husband, but her children (Thomas, Julia, Peter, and Marianna) are all Morrows. Continue reading →

Can somebody be literally scared to death?

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By Ande Jacobson

The Cruelest Month is the third Chief Inspector Armand Gamache (of the Sûreté du Quebec) story by Canadian author Louise Penny. Penny has kept a pace of one or two Gamache mysteries a year since she started the series, and this one was first released in 2008. As usual, the murder requires some setup through the first quarter of the book, and when it comes it hits hard.

Easter is fast approaching, and Three Pines has a visitor – a psychic named Jeanne Chauvet with a surprising history. She’s staying at the B&B where all visitors tend to stay, and Gabri is beside himself with excitement. He convinces Jeanne to lead a séance at the B&B on Good Friday, an activity she ostensibly hadn’t planned on as she had other plans for her time in the village. Still, Gabri is her host at the B&B, so she eventually acquiesces and holds an informal ceremony that night after most of the villagers had spent the afternoon hiding wooden eggs for the upcoming Easter egg hunt. There’s a story behind the wooden eggs that’s nicely covered in the book. For now, suffice it to say that Three Pines has some interesting creative traditions. Continue reading →

The Camel Club’s final case

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By Ande Jacobson

Hell’s Corner, released in 2010, is the fifth and final book in David Baldacci’s Camel Club series. As mentioned in a prior essay, the Camel Club is a ragtag team of eccentrics who are attuned to and intent on exposing and correcting our government’s missteps. John Carr, AKA Oliver Stone, leads the group and is a former government-trained assassin from a highly secret (and fictional) branch of the CIA.

At the outset of the story, Stone is pulled back into the government fold, though not as a Triple Six assassin since that division no longer exists. He has other skills that they desperately need, so the president makes him an offer he that cannot refuse. Stone has been living off the grid for the last thirty years or so, constantly looking over his shoulder because even his own government has been after him. After his recent retaliatory actions to remove his two biggest threats it actually has a valid reason to pursue and eliminate him. The president recognizes his value despite Stone’s sometimes rogue behavior, so he offers him the opportunity to work on a high stakes case. If successful, the president promises that he’ll allow Stone to live out the rest of his life in peace. Stone agrees and is due to embark on a grueling training course after which he’ll be put back in the field on a case he really isn’t expected to survive. Continue reading →

A most ungraceful exit

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By Ande Jacobson

A Fatal Grace is the second of Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Gamache stories. It was first released in Canada as Dead Cold in 2006. Although it takes several chapters before the primary murder of interest occurs, Armand Gamache ends up back in Three Pines again. For a small village outside of Montreal, Three Pines might rival Cabot Cove in Maine for the most murders per capita, and this is only one of the murders being investigated by the famed Chief Inspector this time. He has two investigations going on. The primary case occurs on Boxing Day in Three Pines and involves his full team. The secondary case is one involving the murder of a homeless woman in Montreal that occurred a few days earlier though most of his team is unaware of the Montreal murder. He keeps that case close to the vest as it is a recent one that he’s investigating on the side for a friend with the Montreal Metropolitan Police. Gamache is a Chief Inspector with the state police – the Sûreté du Quebec, and he and his wife (Reine-Marie) have a Boxing Day tradition of combing through the cold cases brought by Marc Brault of the city’s force while Brault does the same with some of Gamache’s more stubborn cases. Why such a recent murder would be a cold case intrigues Gamache. As for the trade, new sets of eyes could sometimes break the logjam. Continue reading →

Everyone needs a very nice box

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By Ande Jacobson

The Very Nice Box is a quirky, sensitive first novel by Eve Gleichman and Laura Blackett, released in July 2021. Gleichman and Blackett’s debut novel deftly takes on social stigmas, office peculiarities, loss, grief, relationships, and happiness wrapped up in an engaging story filled with humor and unexpected twists that keeps readers on the edge of their seats anxious to find out what happens next. The story centers on Ava Simon, an able engineer who leads a design team for STÄDA, a company in Brooklyn somewhat reminiscent of IKEA providing a wide range of heavily branded products meant for functionality above all else. These products are fashionable and cover almost every area of furnishing and function a person could need for their home, office, and personal care. Ava designs an essential furnishing that everyone needs – boxes. Her passion project is to design and build The Very Nice Box, something destined to become one of STÄDA’s signature products. Continue reading →

Life is anything but still

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By Ande Jacobson

Still Life is Louise Penny’s first Chief Inspector Gamache story from 2005. Armand Gamache is a Chief Inspector from the Sûreté du Québec in Montreal who gets called to investigate a suspicious death in a small village not too far away. This is both Penny’s first novel and the first book in her long series of beloved detective stories. While the mystery in this story unfolds in the fictional village of Three Pines, it has been hypothesized that the location is based on Penny’s hometown of Knowlton in Southern Québec. Still Life was first written in English and has since been translated into multiple languages. In the English version, Penny sprinkles bits of French into the description and the dialog on occasion given where the story takes place. Fortunately, a knowledge of French isn’t necessary to fully enjoy the book.

Penny draws vivid characters who delight readers with their quaint observations and local quirks and customs. Her stories are thought of as gentler crime novels with very little violence and no sex which makes them far different from most of the aggressive stories that are so pervasive these days. These stories are instead built through character studies and relationships as Penny focuses on the human and humane interactions. Continue reading →

Justice in Divine

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By Ande Jacobson

Divine Justice is the fourth book in David Baldacci’s Camel Club series. The Camel Club is a ragtag team of eccentrics who are attuned to and intent on exposing the missteps of our government from all sides. They are led by John Carr, AKA Oliver Stone, a former government-trained assassin from a highly secret (and fictional) branch of the CIA who’s been on the fringes of society since his ouster by the corrupt leadership that had his family executed when he wanted out. When he went on the run, he took the name Oliver Stone because he saw real conspiracies everywhere. The other charter members of the club are Reuben Rhodes, Caleb Shaw, and Milton Farb. Continue reading →

The dangers of disinformation in a compelling novel

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By Ande Jacobson

Teri Kanefield is many things. She’s a former appellate defense lawyer who helped those who couldn’t afford representation. She’s an educator who taught at the high school and college level. She’s an author who has published informative works of nonfiction as well as compelling novels. And most recently, she’s tirelessly working to educate the public in hopes of helping people understand the political and legal minefield that has been thrust upon us by the rising authoritarian threat. She’s paraphrased Max Weber in numerous blog posts and social media commentary regarding the three types of political authority. Those include:

  1. Traditional authority: Defined by long-held cultural patterns. These vary depending on the culture and can include religious or monarchical rulers.
  2. Charismatic authority: This is the foundation for a strongman or a dictator. This authority stems from one who captures the attention of the population, often through legitimate means, then often abuses that power.
  3. Rational-legal authority: This authority is based on a system of laws which is fundamental to a democracy.

Most recently, Kanefield has given her regular readers a gift. After researching and writing her upcoming book on disinformation, she wanted to do more. Seeing the damage that disinformation has done, and following the extraordinary saga that has taken the U.S. from being a world-leading democracy to the brink of an authoritarian takeover, she’s written a short novel that chronicles the path we’ve seen unfold over the last half century. She’s framed it within a fictional construct surrounding the confessions of a true believer who is faced with the horror that he helped unleash when it comes back to threaten his freedom and his life. To date, Kanefield released the story, entitled Memoirs and True Confessions of a Disinformation Warrior, in three lengthy posts on her blog, initially linked from the end of her 18 March 2023 entry about Trump’s imminent arrest. The pieces of the novel can be found here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Continue reading →

The end of the King and Maxwell series

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By Ande Jacobson

King and Maxwell is the sixth and final book in David Baldacci’s King & Maxwell series, and it doesn’t disappoint. The last three books of the series, First Family, The Sixth Man, and King and Maxwell are closely coupled, each picking up where the last one leaves off. Sean King and Michelle Maxwell are looking to get back to a more normal, less life-threatening routine when they come upon a teenager running through the woods with a gun in a vicious storm. The boy, Tyler Wingo, is frantic. He’s been informed that his father, Sam Wingo, was killed in combat in Afghanistan. The trouble is that Sam Wingo is very much alive, and he’s a hunted man though it takes a while to determine that this is the case. After some negotiation and being threatened by various government and government adjacent thugs, King, Maxwell, their client Tyler Wingo, his father Sam, and a couple of innocent bystanders are in grave danger. No matter the risks, they aren’t deterred from their quest to clear Sam’s name and get him and Tyler to safety. Continue reading →

‘The Daughters of Kobani’ shows just what motivated women can do

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By Ande Jacobson

In February 2021, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon’s groundbreaking book, The Daughters of Kobani, became available. This is an important book telling the story of the women of the Kurdish Militia, an all-female fighting force (the YPJ) that pushed back and took revenge on the men of ISIS to free Kobani and other Kurdish towns in northeastern Syria. They faced long odds and opposition from their families, the oppressive regime in their native Syria, and hostile neighboring nations. They showed that women are not only equal to men, they are a force to be taken seriously. Lemmon spent hundreds of hours on trips and interviews between 2017 and 2020. She spoke with a broad swath of militia members as well as with civilians just trying to survive in Syria and Iraq. She also talked with the American military advisors in country and with military and political functionaries in the U.S. about the challenges surrounding U.S. involvement. The U.S. was keenly aware of the dangers posed by ISIS to the region and to the world, so there was a vested interest in making this work. Continue reading →