We see the seediest side of Montreal, but it’s tempered by the drama of the baroness’ will and the warm and quirky characters in Three Pines, the serene town where the Gamaches live. Now she’s high, disgraced and angry, out on the streets, and Gamache is using her as bait in a desperate search for the killer opioids.

He is forced to fire a promising protégée, a recovering addict who was on a clean path until the cartel case. Stung by his failure, Gamache realizes his job is on the line.

In the previous book, the shrewd inspector busted a ruthless drug cartel only to see the most lethal of its toxins - a shipment of carfentanil, 5,000 times more potent than heroin - slip by, and it’s now headed for the back alleys of Montreal. The dying wishes of a delusional baroness unfold (and a murder quickly follows), but this subplot takes a back seat to Gamache’s real torment as he takes on the most serious challenge of his career. He has no idea who the deceased is or why he’s been chosen as executor of a shabby estate. She opens with Gamache, the now-suspended head of Quebec’s domestic security, arriving at a remote, derelict farmhouse after receiving a mysterious letter summoning him to help settle a will. In “Kingdom of the Blind,” Penny’s 14th in the Canadian crime chronicles of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, she delivers a riveting package. It’s especially fitting when a holiday-season release wraps up several lingering mysteries and ties them in a neat bow, as Louise Penny does in resolving her characters’ quandaries from her last bestseller.

Kingdom of blind louise penny