A mysterious map has been found in the wall of the Bistro of Three Pines. It is an old detailed map of Three Pines with oddities on it like a snowman holding a hockey stick and a pyramid and a cow marking where a particular cow got stuck years ago as legend held. Who made this beautiful map and why? There has been no known map of Three Pines ever and the village is not on any map of any kind. If you use GPS to try to find it it will show that you are in a giant field not in a village. So the map is indeed a great mystery.
The former Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is now the Commander of the Surete Acadamy for police officers. The former Chief Superintendent who had corrupted the Surete also corrupted the Acadamy and bad officers were still graduating from it so he took the position to clean it up. He fired half of the teachers and went over the applications again changing acceptances to rejections and rejections to acceptances.
One professor he kept on was the second in command, Serge Leduc who really ran things there, but he removed him from his position and made him just a teacher. His reason for this is because Leduc was involved in all sorts of illegal activities involving the school but Gamache couldn't prove them. He was hoping Leduc would slip up and lead him to the evidence. Gamache brings in his childhood friend and old Surete Superintendent Michel Brebeuf who was forcibly retired after being the one to open the gate to the corruption years ago, not just to teach but to serve as an example as to what happens when you break the rules.
Each teacher invites students to his living room for an informal gathering one day a week. Gamache, of course gathers the quite a few oddities, including first-year Amelia Choquet a tattooed, pierced loner, Huifen, a third-year Asian woman just trying to survive, Nathanial Smythe a first-year gay Anglo with two strikes against him, and Jaques Lauren, a third-year head boy who thinks the old way of doing things is best and that Gamache is a coward. All four also visit with Leduc. When Amelia notices the map on the wall Gamache gives them the assignment of figuring out the mystery of the map.
When Nathanial goes to bring Leduc his breakfast one morning against Gamache's new policy, he finds Leduc dead with a gunshot wound to the head. Gamache has Jean-Guy Beavouir, his second in command and a teacher there at the academy call in Chief Inspector Isabelle Lacoste. He notices that one of the copies of the maps he gave to the students is in the bedside drawer of Leduc. After talking to Lacoste and telling her she needs to bring in someone from the outside to overlook the investigation since those being investigated are all former or current officers of the Surete on leave of absence. Then he takes the four students and has them taken to Three Pines after they have been interviewed. He believes either they were involved or they knew something that could get themselves killed and needed to be protected. He told them they were being sent there to work on the mystery of the map which had a bearing on the murder.
Gamache believes that Leduc didn't have the intelligence to pull off the operation he was doing alone. Someone was behind him pulling the strings. But who? Did they kill him believing that he might talk to save his skin with Gamache closing in? Also, the mayor of the town hated Leduc with a passion when he screwed them over by building the Acadamy on the site they had planned on building their children's recreational center that they had spent years saving money for.
Chief Superintendent Brunel sends in Deputy Commissioner Paul Gelinas of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at Gamache's request to overlook the investigation. He tells him it is because he is being considered for the Commissioner's job and Gamache recommended him and wants to know that he was right in doing so. Gelinas suspects everyone, including Gamache himself of murdering Leduc.
This book keeps you guessing as to who the murderer is right up to the very end. Leduc was truly an evil man in what he made the students do and the terror he caused and the belief that you had to hate to be a cop and get them before they get you. Gamache didn't know everything he was up to and part of him wonders whether or not he would have killed him himself if he had. The Reckoning is a good title because it is one for Leduc. His crimes will get him killed in the end. This is an excellently woven novel that blends the tale of the map with the tale of the murder. It won the 2016 Agatha Award for best novel and 2017 Anthony, Barry, Lefty, and McCacvity Awards which says a lot. I give it four out of five stars.
Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Great-Reckoning-Novel-Inspector-Gamache-ebook/dp/B01BBXF0HC/ref=sr_1_10?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1541431018&sr=1-10&keywords=louise+pennyNot food. Not dope. Not some stolen wallet. Something far more precious, and dangerous. The poetry book had joined the others hidden under there. Books in Latin and Greek. Poetry books and philosophy books. She’d taught herself the dead languages, and memorized poetry. Among the filth. Shutting out the sounds of sex, the mutterings and shouts and screams of other boarders. All erased by poetry.-Louise Penny (A Great Reckoning p 53)
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