But, the hunt for the missing drugs plotline rubbed me the wrong way on two counts. The will and murder plotline held my interest just fine and were typical Gamache territory. Kingdom of the Blind is at its core dueling stories – the hunt for the drugs that had been released in Glass Houses and the unraveling of why Myrna and Armand have been asked to be executors in a stranger’s will with a third man, and eventually the investigation of the death of one of the heirs. Penny often tries on new structural elements in her writing with each book, but this time it’s a return to form, using various story threads to balance each other out and leave the reader wondering, sometimes just a paragraph or two before returning them back to action in progress. Amelia Choquet, whom we met in A Great Reckoning is back and we find Gamache, Isabelle Lacoste, and Jean-Guy Beauvoir in dramatically effected circumstances due to the final actions in Glass Houses. In classic Gamache tradition Penny is building on the events of the past, in this case leaning heavily on A Great Reckoning and Glass Houses the immediate predecessors of this book. I decided to give American Kingpina read first to gauge my mood and decided that I was in fact ready to revisit Inspector Gamache and company.

I was excited to see it, I love Louise Penny’s way of crafting story but unsure how much death and destruction I was in the mood for.

My local library system has reopened for pick up in the past couple weeks and Kingdom of the Blind was the first of my holds from way back in March to come in (and why I’m christening this book my No Money square for bingo in celebration of all things library).

Kingdom of the blind by louise penny