Louise Penny (The Madness of Crowds; Kingdom of the Blind) makes a rousing return to Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec with The Grey Wolf, an intriguing novel that takes her perennial hero out of his comfort zone.
The usually unflappable Gamache has grown accustomed to dealing with the darker side of humanity via cases that pull him away from his quiet, charming village of Three Pines and its close-knit residents, many of whom are eccentrics. But The Grey Wolf pits Gamache against terrorists bent on international mayhem.
The plot begins innocuously with several phone calls that Gamache refuses to answer while relaxing in the back garden with his wife, Reine-Marie. Later, the couple's Montreal apartment is broken into. All that's missing is Gamache's summer jacket, which is returned to him at his office with two notes in its pockets, one of which requests a meeting. That meeting ends in violence, causing Gamache to further examine these odd circumstances, aided by his second-in-command and son-in-law, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and Inspector Isabelle Lacoste. The investigation leads Gamache to a far-flung terrorist plot that may have ties to the White House and the Vatican.
Penny keeps tight control of her tense, elaborate plot, drawing out the suspense to the maximum effect in her 19th novel starring Gamache. Danger seeps throughout The Grey Wolf as Gamache begins to realize he can trust only his immediate team. Yet Penny also maintains the intimate, comforting feelings and flecks of humor, a signature of her series. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer