I just finished reading The Grey Wolf, Louise Penny’s latest (#19) in her Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, and I am torn.

On the one hand, I found myself thinking, during the course of the extremely intricate narrative in which both the reader and Gamache himself are unsure who can be trusted, who is in the know, and who is culpable, that I was enjoying a complex plot in which I wasn’t sure, at any moment, what was to happen next, or who was responsible. I have been reading too many suspense or thriller novels recently that had about as much subtlety as a romcom and disappointed my need for intelligent thought. From that standpoint, I appreciated the complexities of The Grey Wolf. I also enjoy Gamache’s philosophical musings about people and life, and his lyrically worded observations of nature. So there were definitely things to like.

On the other hand…

I found myself agreeing with another Goodreads reviewer, who said about this plot, “Penny needs to go back to solving homicides, not national security and international intrigue issues.” It seems like she is making a shift to writing thrillers rather than mysteries. I also agreed with several others who opined that although the plot itself is pretty clear—there is a scheme to poison the drinking water of Montréal by a ruthless person or persons who don’t mind killing anyone who knows anything and/or speaks out—the working out of it, with the jaunts to Washington, D.C., Rome and France, to obscure towns in the wilds of Quebec and to cloistered monasteries whose recipe for a well-known liqueur is another red herring, is overly convoluted and, honestly, somewhat ridiculous. I became skeptical that there was literally no one in the government to trust, other than Gamache’s son-in-law Jean-Guy Beauvoir and his compatriot Isabelle Lacoste (this must be the most corrupt government in Canadian history!) and somewhat bored by the round-and-round nature of clues that led to nothing but more obfuscation.

So…although I am always happy to discover a new Gamache mystery, this one left me more dissatisfied than not.

Also, on a separate topic, am I misremembering, or has Penny rewritten “history”? How is Gamache still in his 50s? I can’t recall the specific book, but I thought he had passed into his 60s in a previous story. And didn’t his godfather, Stephen Horowitz, who is referenced in this book, die in Paris, in All the Devils Are Here? And although I did remember the involvement of Gamache and Beauvoir with the Gilbertine monks from A Beautiful Mystery (book #8), all this back story about this “old adversary” who is now assistant to the deputy prime minister—is my memory so bad that I simply don’t remember that plotline, or WAS there no book and Penny is just making up a shared past for them for The Grey Wolf?

I’m not ready to call it a day on the further tales of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec (especially because this book ended on a cliffhanger), but I’m approaching them with less expectation of true love than I used to do.