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“What stays with the reader are the tender passages, the human insights, the reminders of what makes life worth living.”
— Wall Street Journal
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“Although Penny touches on a wide range of subjects in this expansive story, her main concern is with the sacrifices we make for those we love.”
— New York Times Book Review
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“Robert Bathurst is just about perfect delivering the 16th Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novel…Bathurst’s gently nuanced performance offers insights into Gamache’s childhood; his relationships with his children; his deep bond with wife, Reine-Marie; and with Horowitz, his surrogate father…Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
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“You don’t need to have read the previous books to enjoy the mystery (whose apt title refers to a line from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: ‘Hell is empty and all the devils are here’), but knowing a bit about the characters’ backgrounds helps you follow the subtle tensions between them.”
— AARP The Magazine
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“Exceptional… Penny’s nuanced exploration of the human spirit continues to distinguish this brilliant series.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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“Penny’s mystery is meticulously constructed and reveals hard truths about the hidden workings of the world—as well as the workings of the Gamache family.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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“Penny’s series has always been about the complexities and sustaining glories of family, and here she takes that theme even further, revealing fissures in the Gamache clan, but also showing the resilience and love at its root.”
— Booklist (starred review)
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A Better Man,' with its mix of meteorological suspense, psychological insight and criminal pursuit, is arguably the best book yet in an outstanding, original oeuvre.
— Tom Nolan, Wall Street Journal
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Enchanting…one of [Gamache’s] more ennobling missions.
— Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
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Pensive and moral Quebec police inspector Armand Gamache is justly beloved, and Penny’s evocative prose is unfailingly admirable.
— Seattle Times
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“The deeper reward lies in how the books probe the psyches of Gamache, his family and colleagues, as well as this circle of small-town bohemians, the author picking off her characters, psychologically at least, one by one.
— The Globe and Mail
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The appeal of this series and especially of Gamache himself has always been Penny's ability to show her hero moving from the tangible, brutal facts of murder to the emotions within, the stories in the blood. There are multiple stories, often contradictory, to be found in the many-tentacled web of human tragedy and suffering that Gamache teases to the surface in this moving exploration of ties that both bind and destroy.
— Booklist, starred review
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Wrenching... Penny explores the depths of human emotion, both horrifying and sublime. Her love for her characters and for the mystical village of Three Pines is apparent on every page.
— Publishers Weekly, starred review
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Penny's lyrical writing opens up Gamache's soul-searching in an almost poetic way. "A Better Man," it turns out, isn't so much a novel to wrap up certain story lines in this 14-book series, but one to breathe new life into them.
— Minneapolis Star Tribune