Glass Houses by Louise Penny ****

Glass Houses by Penny Louise is Chief Inspector Gamache #13 set in Three Pines, a small town in Quebec. Armand Gamache is Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté. The plot is about fooling the drug cartels into believing the Sûreté is incompetent and thus trapping them. There is also a murder from fifteen years ago. The simplicity of the main plot is counterbalanced by a narrative that ping-pongs between two timelines, seemingly at random. Not my favorite of this series.

The book includes some interesting history of bootlegging during prohibition in the United States.

A cobrabor is a tradition that states back to fourteenth-century Spain. Originally the cobrador dressed in black robes and followed someone to embarrass them for bad behavior. They were a conscience of sorts. Not surprisingly, the cobradors were often murdered. More recently, the cobradors wore fancy dress and carried a briefcase labeled debt collector to embarrass someone to pay their debts.

A mystery that revolves around drug cartels unbelievably centering their activities in Three Pines.

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A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny *****

A Great Reckoning by PennyLouise is Chief Inspector Gamache #12 set in Three Pines, a small town in Quebec. Armand Gamache is Commander of the Sûreté Academy. The plot has everything: murder, a young girl with some link to Gamache, hidden millions from corrupt activity, a 100-year-old map, a missing town, and secrets from the past.

When Gamache takes over the Academy, he removes most of the corrupt professors but keeps the worse one, Serge Leduc, in hope that he can control the situation long enough to find the stolen money and evidence to send The Duke to jail. Leduc is murdered. Four students who were discovered to be part of his inner circle are implicated, first-years Amelia Choquet and Nathaniel Smythe, and seniors Huifen Cloutier and Jacques Laurin. Gamache is also a suspect. Amelia has a possibly embarrassing connection with Gamache.

The map is found in the wall of the bistro during remodeling.

In addition to Leduc, Gamache gathers a rogues’ gallery of problematic people from his past: Michel Brébeuf, discredited former superintendent of the Sûreté, and Hugo Charpentier, a tactician of an also questionable past.

The RCMP Deputy Commissioner Paul Gélinas, brought in as a neutral third-party to assure a thorough investigation, thinks Gamache was the murder.

A mystery that revolves around personality and character, also the abuse of power by teachers.

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A Better Man by Louise Penny *****

A Better Man by PennyLouise is Chief Inspector Gamache #15 set in Three Pines, a small town in Quebec. Armand Gamache belongs to the Sûreté du Quebec, homicide department. The current case concerns Vivienne, pregnant and murdered. The plot revolves around abuse, both causes and effects. The subplot concerns the complex politics at the Sûreté. Lots of psychological analysis, red herrings, and plot twists.

Vivienne Godin is married to Carl Tracey, known to the Sûreté to abuse his wife. Agent Robert Cameron had been to the house because of this on several occasions, but she had never pressed charges. He had threatened Tracey, against all regulations. Agent Lysette Cloutier is Vivienne’s godmother and a friend of her mother. When Vivienne’s mother died, Lysette stayed in contact with her father, Homer Godin. All of these people are suspects.

Well written and plotted.  Child abuse and partner abuse.

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Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham *****

This book is an allegory for the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Using the explosion of Reactor No. 4 in 1986 to symbolize the COVID-19 pandemic, in fairytale style the narrative reveals the dangers of allowing politics to override science and magical thinking to replace reality. Oops! Actually, Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham is a non-fiction account of a nuclear disaster. Still reading a book with so many similarities to 2020, leaves the reader oscillating between these two interpretations: Parable, history, metaphor, reality.

Some of the similarities:

Slow recognition: In disasters, political organization are slow to recognize changes to the status quo. Political power is conservative, believing in established truths and familiar sources long after reality has changed.

Bias for action: Political organizations want to be seen doing “something,” even when there is no basis for their actions. During actual disasters, the best-case result is a waste of time and resources, while in the worst case, the disaster is exacerbated.

Public relations failures: Political organizations spin positive narratives, but in the case of disasters, this tends erode public confidence.

Details:

“Many more hours would pass, and other men would sacrifice themselves to the delusion that Reactor Number Four survived intact.” Political pressure was to “restart Chernobyl’s three remaining reactors as soon as possible.” Compare this to calls to end social distancing and return to normal.

When the political forces pressed to cool down the destroyed reactor, the scientists responded, “There is nothing left to be cooled!” Compare this to various claims that certain groups and places are free from risk.

The announced plan was to “be evacuated from the city to safe areas in the East for at least two months.” Compare this for similar pronouncements for the crisis to be short-lived.

“The work was relentless, continuing twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, in shifts of six hours each.” Compare this to efforts to manufacture ventilators, face masks, etc.

A 1986 disaster in the USSR with uncanny similarities to 2020.

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