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How the Light Gets In

How the Light Gets In

MysteryPolice Procedural
Published
2013
Language
English

Synopsis

Armand Gamache's homicide department has been hollowed out. His best agents have been transferred away, Jean-Guy Beauvoir no longer speaks to him, and the forces inside the Sûreté du Québec that have hunted him for years are close to finishing the job.

When Myrna Landers asks him to look for a friend who failed to arrive in Three Pines for Christmas, Gamache goes gratefully. The missing woman turns out to have been one of the most famous people in North America, and her disappearance is not the small domestic matter it appeared to be.

How the Light Gets In is the ninth Chief Inspector Gamache novel, and the book the preceding several have been building toward: the point at which Gamache stops retreating, gathers the few people still loyal to him in a village that does not appear on any map, and turns to face what is coming.

Prose complexity
7/10

Vibe

TenseDarkHopefulAtmosphericEmotionalMysterious
BetrayalFound FamilySacrificeRedemption Arc

Genres

Mystery Police Procedural Crime Thriller

About the author

L
Louise Penny

Louise Penny is a Canadian crime novelist, born in Toronto in 1958. She spent eighteen years as a radio host and journalist with the CBC before leaving in 1996 to write fiction. Her debut, Still Life, introduced Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and won the Arthur Ellis, Anthony, Barry and Dilys awards for best first novel. The Gamache books are set largely in Three Pines, a fictional Quebec village, and have since won multiple Agatha and Anthony awards. In 2021 she co-wrote...

Characters

Armand GamacheProtagonist

Chief Inspector of homicide, isolated inside his own force and preparing a final move against it.

Jean-Guy BeauvoirSupporting

Gamache's estranged second-in-command, deep in addiction and turned against him.

Myrna LandersSupporting

Three Pines bookseller and retired psychologist, whose missing friend opens the case.

Ruth ZardoSupporting

The village poet, one of the few who knows who the missing woman was.

Thérèse BrunelSupporting

Superintendent and ally who joins Gamache in Three Pines.

All characters in How the Light Gets In