Fans of Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Gamache will be thrilled with A Great Reckoning, the 12th entry in her delightful Québécois series. New readers will have no trouble starting with this novel as Armand Gamache leaves his retirement in the idyllic village of Three Pines and takes on a new job--head of Québec's police training academy. Gamache has dedicated his life to catching murderers and quashing corruption within the Sûreté, and now he seeks to discover why Sûreté officers are complaining that recent cadets are boorish and untrainable. Convinced that someone within the academy is brainwashing many trainees to be his or her personal thugs, Gamache undertakes the arduous and ultimately deadly process of revamping the staff and curriculum.
Along the way, a strange map found stuffed into the walls of the bistro in Three Pines will have far-reaching repercussions, drawing the villagers into Gamache's dangerous task.
With her trademark poetry and wit, Louise Penny (The Long Way Home) perfects her portrayal of the quirky villagers, the truculent students, Gamache's charming wife, Reine-Marie, and the philosophical, achingly courteous Gamache himself. His determination to see the good in everyone around him may be his ultimate downfall, however, as he struggles to rehabilitate students who may have already slipped down the slope of sociopathy. Weighing themes of redemption and loss, and whether a reckoning for injustice will always arrive, A Great Reckoning is a gripping mystery. --Jessica Howard, blogger at Quirky Bookworm