Ponder: The Grey Wolf

The Grey Wolf ©2024 is Louise Penny's 19th novel. The story of The Grey Wolf follows an unspecified threat to the national safety of the Canadian people. Finding out that threat, and the extent of it, is the plot driver. The intricacies of the plot are entrenched in determining who among the upper echelons of government can be trusted or are complicit in the pending threat. I have read all of Penny's Inspector Armand Gamache novels and greatly enjoyed the majority of them to varying degrees, giving them four or five stars for the most part. Penny is one of my favorite authors but I am sad to say I did not enjoy this book, giving it only two stars. Why?

I find that when I watch television series I am more drawn to the backstory rather that the main plot. Those behind-the-scene situations are what lure me back for the next episode, curious to see what develops. In a medical show, what personal struggles do the doctors and interns battle and still be good at attending to the various maladies and afflictions of their patients? In a crime drama, what do the investigators have going on in their private lives and relationships?  Similarly, in the Louise Penny Inspector Armand Gamache series, I feel an attachment to Armand's family, his co-workers Jean-Guy and Isabelle, and his neighbors within the village of Three Pines. These close familial relations played only a minor role in The Grey Wolf. There are a few small glimpses into the endearing antics of six children under the age of ten at the Gamache's home in Three Pines, but these few scenes are merely a passing nod to the families and the Three Pines characters. 

The setting takes place in many locations:  a bistro, a monastery (several visits), the Vatican, Italy, Montreal, Washington D.C. — and other venues I may have already forgotten. Three Pines plays only a minor role. The three investigators — Armand, Jean-Guy, and Isabella — need to be at different locations simultaneously to discover the threat and neutralize it. I missed the camaraderie of the three inspectors working together, side-by-side. By contrast, in The Grey Wolf they must employ an expeditious divide-and-conquer approach necessary for resolution of this crisis. The actions and discoveries of each inspector are not disclosed in different chapters but rather in different paragraphs of a same chapter, making it hard, for me at least, to follow and digest the rapid transitions between characters and locations.

Despite my disappointment, The Grey Wolf is not going to deter me from reading Louise Penny's future novels. For those readers considering this author, the following image and chart summarize the covers and my rating of her past Inspector Armand Gamache novels. (I never read #18 State of Terror which Louise Penny co-wrote with Hillary Clinton; but that is not an Inspector Armand Gamache novel.)  

If the intent of this book was to create an ambience of confusion, shifting allegiances, and urgency, it succeeded, but at the expense of me failing to grasp the overall sequence of the novel. The climactic scene near the end was chaotic enough that I had trouble following it, also. This book gave me little pleasure in its reading. It made me feel stupid — hence my relatively low rating.

★★☆☆☆ Ok, not great; some redeeming features; I finished it