Kingdom of the Blind

Louise Penny

2018 • 400 pages

Ratings1

Average rating4

"When a peculiar letter arrives inviting Armand Gamache to an abandoned farmhouse, the former head of the Sûreté du Québec discovers that a complete stranger has named him one of the executors of her will. Still on suspension, and frankly curious, Gamache accepts and soon learns that the other two executors are Myrna Landers, the bookseller from Three Pines, and a young builder. None of them had ever met the elderly woman. The will is so odd and includes bequests that are so wildly unlikely that Gamache and the others suspect the woman must have been delusional. But what if, Gamache begins to ask himself, she was perfectly sane? When a body is found, the terms of the bizarre will suddenly seem less peculiar and far more menacing. But it isn't the only menace Gamache is facing. The investigation into what happened six months ago--the events that led to his suspension--has dragged on, into the dead of winter. And while most of the opioids he allowed to slip through his hands, in order to bring down the cartels, have been retrieved, there is one devastating exception. Enough narcotic to kill thousands has disappeared into inner city Montreal. With the deadly drug about to hit the streets, Gamache races for answers. As he uses increasingly audacious, even desperate, measures to retrieve the drug, Armand Gamache begins to see his own blind spots. And the terrible things hiding there."--Publisher's description.

Genre

Fiction

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Adam Shields

Second Reading: I started re-reading the series at the end of August so I am done with 14 books by the start of Nov. I continue to really love the characters and reading them back to back I am seeing themes and connections that I missed when I read them at a rate of one book per year. I appreciate the fact that this is a series that grapples with going outside of the law to solve problems and the next book addresses where Gamache has gone too far outside of the law and has to reign in his officers on smaller crimes because Gamache has gone outside of the lines on the big crimes. But I also think that one of the issues with this line of thought is that it is ending well because he is the good guy going against the bad guys. In A Brutal Telling, Gamache got the wrong guy, but it was a mistake, and Gamache was forgiven. Gamache is not someone that is going to target someone that he knows isn't guilty. But what about people that he thinks it is justified to target? The next book does approach this question, but I still am uncomfortable with the series approaching the line of being cop-propaganda in some ways. Yes, Gamache is a good cop and believes in limits. But what happens when people don't believe in the limits but are not going as far as complete corruption? And what happens when the type of bias that we all have impacts our ability to rightly perceive? This is a series told from the point of view of the police. But the police are not always right. And this more than most of the books in the series is open to the problems of point of view contributing to being part of the problem.

Short Review: I continue to really like this series. I think the last three books are among the top 5 of the series, which is great for 14 books into the series. The problem of the series is that several of the books have gotten to ridiculously large mystery problem, making each crime bigger and bigger. That problem is moderated here. The main mystery is smaller, although action on the drugs from earlier books is still going on.

This is a 4.5 star books but I am rounding down because of the strengths of the series as a whole. I really do like the nuanced ethical discussions of the book. The main ethical question of the last couple books has been when to undertake morally questionably actions ‘for the greater good'.

my longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/kingdom-of-the-blind/

November 30, 2018