A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny

I remember reading Still Life by Louise Penny almost 15 years ago when it first came out. I had no idea that Penny would mean so much to my reading life when I passed that book on to friends and told them about this new author I had found. In this outing Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surêté du Québec battles evil like never before — this time his beloved town of Three Pines and his collection of misfit friends are the target of a complex design for violence. All murder is evil to varying degrees, of course, but in A World of Curiosities the evil that simmers in humanity would surely prevail if not for the moral depth of Gamache.

In Curiosities the Three Pine group of friends uncover a literal “locked room” mystery when a bricked-up wall is discovered in Myrna’s bookstore, leading to a room full of puzzles. Penny also weaves into her novel the true mass-murder story at the Polytechnic University of Quebec where 14 female engineering students were killed, 13 more wounded, in 1989. As we have come to expect from Penny, moral questions arise as quickly as the whodunit. Here, misogyny creeps into the plot over and over as we follow Gamache and his detectives around Three Pines looking for clues to murder and the why of revenge and violence against women.

Normally, I do not like especially violent books, nor novels that chill me to the bone with fear. But Penny is able to discuss the topics of evil and our response to it in such a way that I was not traumatized but rather invested in following Gamache and his moral study on humanity’s evilness. Her intelligent and beautiful prose carries me through the toughest of topics, like no other author I know.

In some ways this Gamache book differs from the others in that the direct focus of the potential evil is against Three Pines residents. This time the decent folks of Three Pines are in danger. I have come to know these town folk as friends over the past 15 years with Penny’s delicate drawing of characters. Curiosities is another striking performance by Louise Penny for her puzzles, her characters and her moral conversation with her readers. Again, 5 of 5 Stars.