The bequests are so wildly unlikely that he suspects the woman must have been delusional - until a body is found. One of her secret fantasies had been that, as a girl who could code, she would work in the one place where a geeky fat girl could get dates. We are told that “for reasons that baffled Gamache, he seemed the only person on earth who could not understand a word Billy Williams said. Like a slightly sinister holiday letter, Penny’s mysteries, which have been coming out regularly for over a decade, catch up readers on the latest news with Gamache’s unruffled wife, Reine-Marie, his more emotionally vulnerable protege and son-in-law, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and his dear friends in Three Pines — particularly the overwhelming fan favorite, that mad, duck-toting poet, Ruth Zardo. Perhaps they were unwilling to believe just how devious Gamache could be and in Kingdom of the Blind he is very devious with twists in the plots and then plots within the twists.

Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. While hiding his own rapidly deteriorating eyesight, a detective investigates the murder of black youth leader. It’s extremely satisfying to tie up many of the loose ends after the shocking end of GLASS HOUSES but of course, there are as many threads left untied at the end of KINGDOM OF THE BLIND, including the prospect of Jean-Guy and Annie moving to Paris and Gamache no longer being the head of homicide at the Sûreté. Of the two she would have to choose getting in trouble, except she could imagine bad data to the CDC might mean someone ended up dying anyway. A literary translator, her scholarship includes: The City Where No One Dies, translated from the French, La ville oú nul ne meurt by Bernard Dadié; Mapping Intersections: African Literature and Africa’s Development (edited with Anne V.She always makes stellar use of flashbacks, but Glass Houses was more than that–we had to follow a weaving of events that weren’t chronological. They are mystified to discover that Bertha has bequeathed her multi-million-dollar estate to her three children, instructing them to sell homes in Vienna and Switzerland. The Blind Kingdom is an illuminating political allegory which resonates in many ways with the contemporary scene and current crisis in Côte d’Ivoire. Although Benny - waking to find herself marooned on a strange planet dressed only in her nightie, with strange voices in her head and a bunch of one-eyed monsters threatening to cut out her tongue - would probably argue that her day was even worse, thank you very much.

for many a non-Canadian reader, the constant Quebecois references may be distracting, while the French peppered throughout the novel, although absolutely typical (I visited friends’ houses where entire family dinners would be conducted half in one language, half in the other) may be jarring for someone looking for a more traditional crime novel. Books take us to places we’ve never been, they teach us about our world, and they help us to understand human experience. Sydney did not believe in life after death but in her experience, admitting this could lead to long and complicated discussions in which people seemed to think that since she did not believe in God or the afterlife, there was nothing to stop her from becoming an ax murderer.But he had big, soulful looking eyes which Sydney was beginning to suspect had caused her to attribute to Damien certain emotional characteristics—sensitivity, vulnerability—that he in fact did not have.