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A review by erine
The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny
3.0
As with all her other books, there are multiple threads, but in this book they are tangled in a very inelegant way. Instead of just being loosely twisted together, the investigators kept chewing over the same elements in slightly different ways. It was not an overall pleasant experience, even though there were still parts of this I enjoyed.
She begins with the story of a eugenicist statistician (Dr. Robinson) who is promoting the idea of forced mercy killing to save resources. Her family has died long ago, and she is left with her best friend when her godmother invites her to stay in Quebec and do a presentation of her statistics that apparently support the genocide of the elderly and disabled. There is an attempted assassination at Dr. Robinson’s presentation and of course Gamache and crew are involved.
There is also Haniya from Sudan, a survivor of unspeakable things, who is in Three Pines for Nobel Peace Prize reasons (I’m a little fuzzy on why she was there). But Haniya provides some opportunity for examination and discussion of what constitutes bravery, what we do for survival, and a reminder that while not everyone’s difficulties are the same, some are definitely worse than others.
And then the addition of Ewan Cameron, a real person who conducted terrible psychological experiments on unwilling people in the mid twentieth century. Vincent Gilbert (the “asshole saint” who lives in the woods behind Three Pines) was a low-level assistant of Cameron’s and it comes out that
The murder mystery centers on Dr. Robinson’s friend, and the investigation circles around, rearranging the pieces of Dr. Robinson, her friend, her godmother, Vincent Gilbert, and Haniya. Someone killed Debbie (the friend). Someone killed Dr. Robinson’s sister, Maria, many years ago. Haniya has admittedly killed to survive before. These elements and the abhorrence of Dr. Robinson’s work are a mish mash hash that get churned over again and again and again. And again. Gamache and Beauvoir struggle personally because Beauvoir’s new child, Idora, was born with Down syndrome, and Robinson advocates aborting all such babies.
Despite the tangle of threads and the tedious repetition of theories, there were some good bits. Truly: what does it take to be brave (was John Brown a hero or a terrorist or both?), and does murder always stem from hate or fear or can it be inspired by love? How far do we take free speech? There are some really relevant issues in all this.
But the background is what made me want to throw this book across the room. The entire story takes place after a pandemic. At 56% I finally noted the word “covid.” Before that it was the more generic “pandemic.” The story was bad enough when it was just painting broad strokes, but to specifically call out covid makes me so irritated. This book was published in August of 2021, after the vaccines were available, but well after it was very clear that the vaccines were only going to do so much to stop the virus. I’m reading this two years later and the pandemic has ebbed, but covid is here to stay. The circumstances that she describes — virus and total lockdown, then vaccines and total freedom — are utter fantasy. There was no nuance or accuracy in this element of this story, and the idea that’s it’s all over and we can skip together and hold hands is madness indeed.
As always, though, I still appreciate her themes of love and community. And normally I enjoy her realism and reluctance to play into binary thinking. That quality is still here when she talks about what strength is needed to be brave, and about how evil does not always wear a sinister face. But she utterly failed to portray the covid pandemic with any degree of balance, and that was disappointing.
“But they, better than most, knew that no place was really safe from physical harm. Anything could happen to anyone, at any moment. What made a place safe were the people. The caring. The kindness. The helping. Sometimes the mourning. And often the forgiveness.”
She begins with the story of a eugenicist statistician (Dr. Robinson) who is promoting the idea of forced mercy killing to save resources. Her family has died long ago, and she is left with her best friend when her godmother invites her to stay in Quebec and do a presentation of her statistics that apparently support the genocide of the elderly and disabled. There is an attempted assassination at Dr. Robinson’s presentation and of course Gamache and crew are involved.
There is also Haniya from Sudan, a survivor of unspeakable things, who is in Three Pines for Nobel Peace Prize reasons (I’m a little fuzzy on why she was there). But Haniya provides some opportunity for examination and discussion of what constitutes bravery, what we do for survival, and a reminder that while not everyone’s difficulties are the same, some are definitely worse than others.
And then the addition of Ewan Cameron, a real person who conducted terrible psychological experiments on unwilling people in the mid twentieth century. Vincent Gilbert (the “asshole saint” who lives in the woods behind Three Pines) was a low-level assistant of Cameron’s and it comes out that
Spoiler
Cameron treated Dr. Robinson’s mother which directly led to her suicide. In a parallel Cameron thread, Reine-Marie is helping a local family organize the papers of their recently deceased mother and ultimately realizes that this mother had also been experimented on.The murder mystery centers on Dr. Robinson’s friend, and the investigation circles around, rearranging the pieces of Dr. Robinson, her friend, her godmother, Vincent Gilbert, and Haniya. Someone killed Debbie (the friend). Someone killed Dr. Robinson’s sister, Maria, many years ago. Haniya has admittedly killed to survive before. These elements and the abhorrence of Dr. Robinson’s work are a mish mash hash that get churned over again and again and again. And again. Gamache and Beauvoir struggle personally because Beauvoir’s new child, Idora, was born with Down syndrome, and Robinson advocates aborting all such babies.
Despite the tangle of threads and the tedious repetition of theories, there were some good bits. Truly: what does it take to be brave (was John Brown a hero or a terrorist or both?), and does murder always stem from hate or fear or can it be inspired by love? How far do we take free speech? There are some really relevant issues in all this.
But the background is what made me want to throw this book across the room. The entire story takes place after a pandemic. At 56% I finally noted the word “covid.” Before that it was the more generic “pandemic.” The story was bad enough when it was just painting broad strokes, but to specifically call out covid makes me so irritated. This book was published in August of 2021, after the vaccines were available, but well after it was very clear that the vaccines were only going to do so much to stop the virus. I’m reading this two years later and the pandemic has ebbed, but covid is here to stay. The circumstances that she describes — virus and total lockdown, then vaccines and total freedom — are utter fantasy. There was no nuance or accuracy in this element of this story, and the idea that’s it’s all over and we can skip together and hold hands is madness indeed.
As always, though, I still appreciate her themes of love and community. And normally I enjoy her realism and reluctance to play into binary thinking. That quality is still here when she talks about what strength is needed to be brave, and about how evil does not always wear a sinister face. But she utterly failed to portray the covid pandemic with any degree of balance, and that was disappointing.
“But they, better than most, knew that no place was really safe from physical harm. Anything could happen to anyone, at any moment. What made a place safe were the people. The caring. The kindness. The helping. Sometimes the mourning. And often the forgiveness.”