• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2019 November #2
  *Starred Review* High drama pervades during a spring run-off and frost quake. Chunks of ice thaw, crushing together, blocking Quebec Province's "growling" Bella Bella River and "roiling up decades of refuse and debris"—including a missing woman's corpse. Bathurst's narration captures the townspeople's broken tones of terror and pounding pulse rates when they flee, the sand bags tumbling into disarray, knowing if the dam blew it would spill Quebec into Vermont. This chaos foreshadows the convoluted investigation headed by Armand Gamache. As Gamache is attacked by the media for his judgment calls and demoted to his previous police post in the province, Bathurst presents Armand's calm exterior in lightly British tones despite humiliation, then mounting internal disgust as the case's abuse, deception, and violence surface; however, his thoughts cringe at each new revelation and are engrossingly voiced with sharp-edged precision as facts (or are they?) and questions proliferate. Louise Penny's text provides plenty of characters (including one who carries a pet duck around, somewhat like the Twin Peaks' Log Lady) experiencing a wide range of emotions from grief to accusatory attack, occasionally in French and all handled admirably. Happily, dry wit occasionally provides respite delivered tongue in cheek, even at the flood's chaos as Armand sees some authority has been assigned with adverse results "to one who made decisions, apparently, in consultation with her duck and a bottle of Scotch." Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews.

LOUISE PENNY is the author of the #1 New York Times and Globe and Mail bestselling series of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novels (Still Life, A Fatal Grace, and The Cruelest Month). She has won numerous awards, including a CWA Dagger and the Agatha Award (six times), and was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. In 2017, she received the Order of Canada for her contributions to Canadian culture. Louise lives in a small village south of Montréal.