Redheaded Reviews: Glass Houses by Louise Penny

'Armand Gamache, who was the Commander of the Surete Police Academy last we saw, is now the Chief Superintendent of the Surete police of Quebec. The book opens with him giving testimony at a trial and goes back and forth in time to tell the stories of a murder of a young woman and how the Surete plan on battling the drug problem in Quebec.

One day a cobrador del frac, a person dressed all in black, a black robe with a hood and in a black mask appears at the Three Pines Halloween party and then goes and stands outside on the square facing the shops. It looks like Death personified. But a cobrador del frac in modern times hunts down people who owe a debt and shames them into paying it. But the cobrador is older than that. There is a moral one that shames those have committed a moral debt into making it right and this cobrador seems to be this of this kind. He has spooked the entire town and they are looking to Gamache to do something about it. He talks to him and tries to convince him to move on but to no avail.

Four friends are staying there that weekend as they do every year. Katie, Lea, Mateo, and Patrick. Mateo is a journalist who told Gamache about the cobrador as he did an article about them. Lea is a politician and is married to Mateo and tried to get legislation passed for a drug bill named in honor of a friend of theirs who walked off of a top of a building while high. They blame the drug dealer who they were never able to find. Katie had been dating him but just broke up with him to begin dating Patrick. Katie and Patrick own a successful architect firm.

But they're not the only ones who know what the cobrador is. Jaqueline who works at the bakery and Anton the busboy and sometimes cook at the bistro both know what it is. Both of them used to work at the same house together. She was the nanny and he was the chef for a shady character named Antonio Ruiz who has gone back to Spain and has faced charges there that didn't stick but has also faced his own cobrador there.

Katie Evans is the victim which leads you to wonder was the cobrador there for her? What did she do in her past that was so horrible that she deserved to die over? Or was it something else? She was found with the cobrador's costume on when she died. Was someone trying to say something with that? And what happened to the cobrador?

Also, Gamache is trying to fight the war on drugs, which he knows is lost, but he believes he can strike a devasting blow but it means acting incompetent for the better part of a year and lulling the criminal world into believing that the Surete are idiots and that they can do whatever they want before the Surete finds a way to strike back in one fell swoop. It comes at a heavy cost, though and not just that they and those involved in the scheme may lose their jobs, but that some may lose their lives.

This novel won the 2017 Agatha for Best Mystery and was a finalist for the 2018 Anthony best series/novel, as well as a finalist for the 2018 Lefist and McCavity. It really keeps you guessing. You don't even know who is on trial at the beginning of the novel and don't figure it out until the very end. Penny uses some very good sleight of hand to keep you from figuring out this book. I figured out pieces but never the whole picture. It also takes a cold hard look at the drug problem, especially the pharmaceuticals and the damage they do and how hard it is to prosecute them when drug dealers change the formula by a few degrees making it a different drug altogether and one that isn't illegal and trying to keep up with the latest designer drugs. Quebec is on the border of the U.S. and with it harder to get drugs across the Mexico border, some see it as easier to get them across the Canadian border. This is an excellent book and one really worth reading. I give it five out of five stars.

Quotes

And Lacoste remembered the advice given to Mossad agents. Advice Lacoste had found abhorrent, wrong on ever level. Until it had been explained. The instruction given the Israeli agents, if they met resistance during an assault, was kill the women first. Because if a woman was ever driven so far as to pick up a weapon, she would be the most committed , the least likely to ever give up. Kill the women first. Lacoste still hated the advice. The simplicity of it. The baldness of it. But she also hated that the philosophy behind it was almost certainly true.