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THE GREY WOLF by Louise Penny Minotaur, October 2024 432 pages $30.00 ISBN: 1250328136

Let's grab a cup of hot chocolate, shall we, and enter that bistro where goodness is steadfast, where badness's inherent ugliness and messiness always reveals itself thanks to the workings of just laws. In this nineteenth Armand Gamache novel, Armand and the usual crew respond to threats made against the Canadian water supply. Clues lead the Sureté to Italy, Washington, DC, and France as they try to stop an act of domestic terrorism that could kill millions. Although there is badness in Gamache's world, this novel does not question the goodness of Penny's cast of main characters. Badness is a threat by power-hungry leaders who have friends in the Mob.

Dramatis personae: Armand Gamache, Head of Homicide, Sureté de Quebec; his trusty side-kicks Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle LaCost, co-seconds-in-command of homicide; Dom Philippe, spiritual leader of San Gilbert-entre-les-Loups, a Gilbertine monastery; Claudine McGregor, head of The Mission, which serves homeless people; Sister Irene, an American nun working at the Curia; Charles Langlois, field biologist who specializes in water pollution, but not for long; Frère Robert, a Carthusian who has heard something horrifying in confession, and which hounds him to death; Frère Sebastian, a Dominican monk mysteriously called to the Vatican; miscellaneous Mounties, cops, denizens of numerous countries, monks, and henchmen.

Unlike in many of Penny's Gamache novels, Reine-Marie, Annie, Ruth, Gabri and Oscar, Myra and Clara make only cameo appearances; they remain in the hearts and memories of Gamache and Beauvoir, comforting them in times of danger.

The action of THE GREY WOLF takes place, not in the village of Three Pines (which is not really a village, is it?), but in San Gilbert-entre-les-Loups, the Grande Chartreuse, the streets and civic buildings of Montreal, and a large, modern water treatment plant. The title THE GREY WOLF, springs from a San Gilbert scene shortly after Armand sees a wolf. Speaking to Beauvoir, he recalls some advice offered by a Medicine Man in far-off times: the grey wolf is for compassion, and the black wolf is for vengeance. We carry both wolves within us.

The experience of reading THE GREY WOLF is like solving a very complicated puzzle in which many of the pieces have the same shape. In Three Pines, a strange elderly man has left a bottle of Chartreuse. Gamache, enjoying his time off, receives two strange telephone calls. In Montreal, two mafia hits use the same modus operandi, but there appears to be no relation between the victims. Gamache is called to meet a mysterious person at a restaurant, who entertains him with a web of lies and half-truths. At the Gilbertine monastery, Dom Philippe is missing, a very rare occurrence. Dom Philippe's assistant seems to be hiding something. Even the Mounties are not who they seem. These facts, and a number of very strange twists involving the novitiate of three friends entering cloistered life, eventually lead Gamache and his trusted associates to try to stop an act of domestic terrorism.

In terror promulgated by foreign actors, it is "easy" to finger the wrongdoers: they do not look like "us." In choosing domestic terrorism to power her new novel, Penny follows an adage that she has repeated in previous volumes: "and a man's foes shall be they of his own household" (Matt 10:36). In this latest Gamache novel, it is difficult to tell friend from enemy. In a mobile modern world, we all "look alike" and we are all of the same household-continent-country-world. In this world, the only criterion for judging good from evil is in a person's actions. Gamache and the crew have to look very closely and dig very deep indeed before the final pages of the novel.

Ms. Penny, if I may address you, although I have not the right to advise someone who is so successful a writer: Gamache novels are delicious because of the characters you have created. In THE GREY WOLF, there are no new characters and no new stories about these new characters' past lives. Instead, the novel is plot-driven, taking us on rollercoaster twists and turns. Sometimes those twists and turns seem to have been designed to fill pages. In your best novels, the bad guys are not straw men, and it is characters' lives which naturally drive the plot. I look very much forward to your next release.

§ Cathy Downs is professor emerita, English, American literature, Texas A&M University-Kingsville. These days she makes quilts, cultivates a garden, remodels a home, feeds the cats, and enjoys dipping into reading of the mysterious kind.

Reviewed by Cathy Downs, November 2024

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