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Chief Inspector Gamache #17
by Louise Penny
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache returns to Three Pines in #1 New York Times bestseller Louise Penny's latest spellbinding novel.
You're a coward.
Time and again, as the New Year approaches, that charge is leveled against Armand Gamache.
It starts innocently enough.
While the residents of the Québec village of Three Pines take advantage of the deep snow to ski and toboggan, to drink hot chocolate in the bistro and share meals together, the Chief Inspector finds his holiday with his family interrupted by a simple request.
He's asked to provide security for what promises to be a non-event. A visiting Professor of Statistics will be giving a lecture at the nearby university.
While he is perplexed as to why the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec would be assigned this task, it sounds easy enough. That is until Gamache starts looking into Professor Abigail Robinson and discovers an agenda so repulsive he begs the university to cancel the lecture.
They refuse, citing academic freedom, and accuse Gamache of censorship and intellectual cowardice. Before long, Professor Robinson's views start seeping into conversations. Spreading and infecting. So that truth and fact, reality and delusion are so confused it's near impossible to tell them apart.
Discussions become debates, debates become arguments, which turn into fights. As sides are declared, a madness takes hold.
Abigail Robinson promises that, if they follow her, ça va bien aller. All will be well. But not, Gamache and his team know, for everyone.
When a murder is committed it falls to Armand Gamache, his second-in-command Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and their team to investigate the crime as well as this extraordinary popular delusion.
And the madness of crowds.
What are you reading this week? (7/17/2025)
I am halfway thru Northwoods by Daniel Mason. I read his earlier book The Piano Tuner and was wowed and so decided to take the leap to his most recent book. I am enjoying the very original book, Northwoods on audio (Libro.fm format, benefits an independent bookstore of my choosing). Also reading ...
-Karen_K
What book or books are you reading this week? (02/06/2025)
Carys Davis' Clear , Karen Russell's Antidote , listening to Louise Penny's The Madness of Crowds Love them all!
-Nancy_B
What book or books are you reading this week? (01/09/2025)
Just finishing listening to and reading "Code Name Helene" by Ariel Lawhon, author of "Frozen River" one of my favorite books of 2024. This is a great story of a true life heroine who works with the French resistance and becomes a leader. I highly recommend. I have also been reading Louise Penny'...
-Susan_C
"[B]rilliant...Seamlessly integrating debates about scientific experimentation and morality into a fair-play puzzle, Penny excels at placing her characters in challenging ethical quandaries. This author just goes from strength to strength." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
This information about The Madness of Crowds was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Jean-Francois Bérubé
Louise Penny is the multi-award winning author of the Chief Inspector Gamache novels, set in her home province of Québec, Canada. Her books, including State of Terror written with Hillary Rodham Clinton, have sold more than 18 million copies worldwide, topped international bestseller lists, including the New York Times, and been translated into 32 languages. The recipient of both the Order of Canada and l'Ordre national du Québec, her country's highest civilian honours, her Three Pines Foundation reaches out to those in crisis and offers financial and emotional support, with a special focus on literacy as well as dementia care. Her husband, Michael, died of dementia in 2016. She lives with her Golden Retrievers Muggins and Charlie in a village south of Montréal.
If you liked The Madness of Crowds, try these:
by Louise Penny
Published 2021
The 16th novel by #1 bestselling author Louise Penny finds Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec investigating a sinister plot in the City of Light.
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by Tom McAllister
Published 2018
We Need to Talk about Kevin meets Dept. of Speculation in a novel about one woman's furious grappling with the repercussions of small-town tragedy.
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