The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny

(30. - 1102.) The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny - Armand and Marie-Reine Gamache are back in Three Pines. Most important, their newest grandchild, Idola, is present. Idola has Down Syndrome. They love her fiercely.

Colette Roberge, the Chancellor of the Université de l’Estrie, has asked for Armand, Chief Inspectior of the Homicide Division of the Sûreté du Quebec, to provide security for a public address being given by a statistician, Abigail Robinson. She has analyzed massive amounts of information on societies, trends and the Covid pandemic. She has taken a phrase of hope for recovery from the pandemic, All will be well, and twisted it into a phrase supporting her thesis that for the world to recover from the pandemic and thrive there needs to be “mercy” killings, especially of the aged, and abortions of the deformed unborn. Those who burden society are to be removed.

Annie and Jean-Guy, the daughter and son-in-law of the Gamaches, are the parents of Idola. Jean-Guy feels guilty about considering Idola a “burden”. He and Annie had considered abortion when they learned she had Down’s Syndrome but felt it wrong to abort when the baby was developing normally in every other way.

Wisely preparing for the worst, Armand has dozens of agents at the hall where Robinson is to speak to an overflowing crowd. 

Robinson avoids rhetoric and incendiary statements. She is mild in speech going through her statistical analysis dispassionately. She is convincing because she appears and speaks rationally. Moral consequences do not fit into statistics. While most are repelled by her conclusions, there are many eager to embrace them:

Of course, if Professor Robinson’s findings were implemented, it meant the right to die became the obligation to die, but sacrifices needed to be made. In a free society.

Whose life should be considered not worthy? Robinson’s statistics tell her.

As she moves into her address firecrackers provide distraction and then two shots are fired at Robinson.

Armand and his team are protecting a woman whose views Armand abhors. He had experienced the official indifference to the fate of the elderly and infirm in Quebec nursing homes who died in droves early in the pandemic. And there is Idola.

While Robinson would kill thousands, even millions, for the greater good who would kill to thwart the spread of her ideas.

Penny creates an amazing New Year’s Eve party. Everyone from the village gathers at the Auberge. An intellectual confrontation over scientific “facts” and “truths” takes place while the children of the village, carrying on a Québecois tradition, act out a fable which this year is “The Animals Sick of the Plague”.

There has been grave debate within the celebration of the new year. Whether goodness is fragile. Will a death end a movement or create a martyr for the cause? 

Then murder is done in the woods outside the inn. All present are suspects as no one is sure whether the deceased was the intended victim and fierce emotions are swirling about that might sway any of them to kill

Robinson has caused an emotional reckoning of the worth of lives. 

A retired doctor, Vincent Gilbert, provides a description of those with Down Syndrome:

“They’re kind. Content. They don’t judge. They don’t hide their feelings. There’s no hidden agenda. Complete acceptance. If that isn’t grace, I don’t know what is. I’m not saying people with Down Syndrome are perfect or always easy. That would be to trivalize them, make them sound like pets. What I am saying is that in my experience they make better humans than most.”

Everyone has a family member who is profoundly disabled. It may be a child or an adult or a senior. Penny provides examples from the families of the characters. A chill went through me as I thought of Penny’s brilliant husband, Michael, who endured a devastating decline with Alzheimer’s. How Penny and friends worked together to keep him safe and comfortable and loved at home. And how he died with Penny holding his hand.

On virtually every page there is a scene or a conversation or a reflection that caused me to lift my eyes from the book and think upon what I had just read. There were pages where I murmured aloud with wonderment.

The startling depths of connections between the characters are amazing. Intricate but never implausible. Suffering going back generations is revealed.

The Madness of Crowds is a return to my favourite books in the series where Armand solves a challenging crime with his brains - where his mind is more important than his gun.

Amidst the exploration of great questions of life and death and investigation of murder Penny emphasizes the small joys of family and community life. Taking a grandchild out for a toboggan ride. Blueberry pancakes and maple smoked bacon for breakfast.

(It is a book so rich in storylines and characters that I need another two posts to set out my reactions and thoughts upon the book.)

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Penny, Louise – (2005) - Still Life; (2006) - Dead Cold (Tied for 3^rd Best fiction of 2006); (2007) - The Cruelest Month; (2009) - The Murder Stone (Tied for 4th Best fiction of 2009); (2010) - The Brutal Telling; (2011) - Bury Your Dead (Best Fiction of 2011); (2011) - A Trick of the Light; (2012) - The Beautiful Mystery (Part I) and The Beautiful Mystery (Part II); (2013) - "P" is for Louise Penny - Movie Producer and Review of the Movie of Still Life; (2013) - How the Light Gets In; (2014) - The Long Way Home; (2014) - The Armand Gamache Series after 10 Mysteries - Part I and Part II; (2015) - The Nature of the Beast (Part I) and The Nature of the Beast (Part II); (2016) - A Great Reckoning - The Academy and Comparisons and The Map; (2016) - Louise Penny and Michael Whitehead Holding Hands; (2017) - Glass Houses - Happiness and Unhappiness and Getting the Law Wrong; (2019) - Kingdom of the Blind and Irreconcilable Dispositions; (2019) - A Better Man; (2020) - All the Devils are Here and Relationship Restaurants in Fiction and Real Life and Reading of the Marais Simultaneously; Hardcover

Three Pines: The Amazon Prime Series

Through the fine blog The Rap Sheet I learned that Amazon Prime will be showing in 2022 a T.V. Series, Three Pines, made by Left Bank Pictures. I am a touch embarrassed that I had not realized a series based on Louise Penny’s books. I say “based” as the Prime press release says it is an “original scripted series”. There will be 8 one hour episodes filmed this fall and early winter.

The T.V. series will be the second time the Armand Gamache mysteries have been put on film. In 2013 the first book in the series, Still Life, was adapted for a T.V. movie which was filmed by and shown on Canada’s public broadcaster, the CBC. Penny was a producer of the movie.

In my review, a link is below, I thought the movie was alright but concluded it was fundamentally flawed by the casting of British actor, Nathaniel Parker, as Gamache. The movie created a lot of interest among the readers of the books. My review is the second most read post on my blog.

I was unhappy with Parker’s “urbane English accents”. That was unfair as Penny had in the books that Gamache learned English while resident in England.

What I consider fair is that Parker never fit my image of Gamache from the books. Both in appearance and mannerisms I did not feel Parker was a distinguished French Canadian.

For the new series English American actor, Alfred Molina, has been chosen to play Gamache. He is also a producer of the series.

Molina has had a wide and varied career. At looper.com he is described as having been:

... in an array of movies and TV shows, including “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Chocolat.” However, he’s perhaps best known as the villain Doc Ock in Spider’Man2,” …

In the Amazon press release Christina Wayne, head of Canadian Originals at Amazon Studios gushes:

“Alfred Molina perfectly embodies the cerebral and compassionate nature of Gamache, and leads a tremendous cast.”

Above is a photo of Molina. In it he is an excellent visual image of the Gamache I imagine from the books.

As to capturing Gamache’s character I will have to be convinced. 

It remains hard for me to understand why a French Canadian actor was not chosen for the role. I expect it was an issue of name recognition. Getting a well known English / American actor is bound to be easier to promote but much harder to be credible in the role. Choosing Parker did not go well.

There is style and je ne sais quoi to French Canadians that is difficult to master.

The press release describes Gamache as:

…. A man who sees things that others do not: the light between the cracks, the mythic in the mundane, and the evil in the seemingly ordinary. As he investigates a spate of murders in Three Pines, a seemingly idyllic village, he discovers long-buried secrets and faces a few of his own ghosts.

I pray the series focuses on Gamache as a thoughtful man rather than the typical American detective willing, even eager, to use violence to solve murders.

I am hopeful for the series as Left Bank Pictures produced one of my favourite series in recent years, The Crown. 

There is apparently going to be an indigenous component to the series by the indigenous actors named in the release. Indigenous story lines will be a definite departure from the themes of the books.

The press release says Emilia di Girolamo will adapt the novels as lead writer with Catherine Tregenna writing two episodes. Di Girolamo is a British writer who is best known as a screenwriter for the T.V. series, Law and Order: U.K.

In creating a series based on a long running mystery series I wonder whether Three Pines will be more like Bosch or Longmire. In Bosch there was a main story that ran through each season with an individual storyline in each episode. Longmire had a season story but was more focused on a mystery in each episode.

I thought the movie Still Life struggled to capture the nuances of the books. I believe Gamache and the other residents of Three Pines are better suited to a series.

The series is being filmed in the Eastern Townships of Quebec and the city of Montreal where the books have been set so I expect the series to be visually stunning.

What I have been unable to determine is whether Penny has a role in the series. From the press release through various articles none have spoken of her being an active participant. As noted above she was a producer on the movie 8 years ago. As noted in another post, a link is below, I set out some of her reservations over letting her books becoming movies or a T.V. series

Three Pines is definitely a series I want to watch next year.

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Reviewing the Movie Adaptation of Louise Penny's Still Life

"P" is for Louise Penny as Movie Producer

Flat Out Delicious by Jenn Sharp

(31. - 1103.) Flat Out Delicious by Jenn Sharp (Photography by Richard Marjan) - Saskatchewan is known for farming. Vast fields of wheat, canola and barley dominate the southern half of our province. While we are known for feeding the world there has been a steady growth in smaller food adventures. Flat Out Delicious is a guide to 167 Saskatchewan food artisans with great photos.

Sharp travelled around Saskatchewan conducting over 150 interviews as she assembled information on farms, restaurants and all sorts of other food ventures.

Not too many years ago Sharon and I would visit markets and unique restaurants in Toronto and Vancouver. On trips to Europe we would marvel at the foods and drinks available in the countryside and wish there could be such food options in Saskatchewan.

For a time I thought the long distances between our communities and the sparse population of the province meant it was too difficult to sustain food artisans. We have just over a million people in a province nearly the size of Texas and almost three times the size of the United Kingdom.

As I live outside Regina and Saskatoon I will focus my review on ventures that I personally know in rural Saskatchewan.

Hodgson Farms is located a few kilometers from Melfort where Sharon and I live. I know Susan and Mark. I see Susan Thursdays in Melfort at their outdoor market venue. The book discusses a pair of their specialities - cantaloupes and oversize strawberries. I was startled when I first saw their cantaloupes for they are grown outside rather than in greenhouses. While frost threatens crops in spring and fall the Hodgsons have learned to grow Halona cantaloupes in Saskatchewan. They have wonderful flavour much more vibrant than the cantaloupes grown thousands of kilometers from Saskatchewan and trucked here. Our granddaughters Hannah (3) and Hazel (2) loved the Hodgson Farms cantaloupes when they visited us this summer.

Just over 100 kilometres to the northeast of Melfort is the Mabel Hill Restaurant and Marketplace at Nipawin. We have enjoyed several meals. I wrote a post (a link is below) about our 40th anniversary meal at Mabel Hill in August of 2019.

Michael Brownlee is the accomplished chef and owner of Mabel Hill. Flat Out Delicious quotes him on his philosophy:

“I wanted to see what’s possible - what you can grow every day and every year and how it can be changed into something absolutely beautiful.” Guests are invited to walk through the gardens, samplying the produce before sitting down for a meal. “The idea is to offer a sense of place.”

He is an excellent host with the occasional special touch for patrons. At a subsequent visit Michael provided us with cantaloupe liqueur. While it came from Italy, maybe someday local cantaloupes will be used.

Last month Sharp and her crew from the Flat Out Food Series were back at Mabel Hill on another long summer tour around the province. On her Facebook page she talked about “harvesting ingredients” from the gardens for the night’s supper.

She provided a photo of a beautifully set up table of their meal at Mabel Hill.

Saskatchewan has some of the best honey in the world. Kitako Lake Honey produces high quality honey about half an hour south of Melfort. I know the owner Steve. I represented his parents when they established the business.

Steve moves his bees to gain honey from specific flower sources such as dandelions or clover. His approach reminds me of my father who was passionate about selling only alfalfa and clover honey from our farmyard when I was growing up at Meskanaw. Dad did not move his hives around but there was enough diversity in the area he could place hives where most of the blooms would be alfalfa or clover.

Unlike our apiary (my Dad never used that official name for a beekeeping business) Kitako creams its honey at “low temperatures so as not to damage the heath properties”. Our honey just naturally granulated.

Kitako has an interesting Facebook page (a link is below).

From my experiences, you can trust the information provided in Flat Out Delicious. Their descriptions are fair and accurate. They do not puff up ventures. It is an excellent book that food lovers can rely on for finding wonderful food places and food people in Saskatchewan. I would savour spending a full summer using the book to go from artisan to artisan around the province.

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Our Fortieth Anniversary

Kitako Honey - Facebook

Berlin Life in Germania

In my review of Germania by Harald Gilbers I focused on the crime fiction aspects of the book in which Richard Oppenheimer, a former Jewish police inspector, is called upon by SS Haupsturmführer Vogler to aid in the investigation for a serial sexual predator. I spoke of the book being fine fiction with a criminal case as its theme. The book provided a vivid portrayal of life in Germany late in World War II. Fellow blogger, Margot Kinberg, commented on that post that the book looked to have a lot of “richness”. Her remark was apt. The book is rich in details. This post will provide illustrations. A warning that some may find the information spoilers.

Oppenheimer and his wife, Lisa, live in a Jewish House whose inhabitants are intermarried couples with one spouse Jewish and the other non-Jewish. I knew being in an intermarried or mixed marriage provided a level of protection from deportation to the death camps for the Jewish spouse but I had never heard of Jewish Houses where such couples were grouped together.

 Judenhäuser were not ghettos so much as designated housing for the mixed marriage couples. Doing a little research some couples survived the war living in such housing.

The Museum Blindenwerskatt said about 8,000 Jews survived the war in Berlin with most of them in mixed marriages.

The investigation takes Oppenheimer into a home for the Lensborn. While he had thought it a form of brothel to create babies to maintain the German population he finds the actual circumstances more complex.

He finds that the organizers are not seeking to undermine marriage. For women unable to find a partner they are “considering offering help” in the form of “procreation helpers” but trials were unsuccessful because of the low quality of men who volunteered.

The doctor in charge of the home then recounts a bizarre idea of Heinrich Himmler:

“Did you know, the Reich Leader SS advocates a fascinating theory. He has found proof that procreation helpers existed in Teuton and Dorian times …. The chosen man had to mate with her on the ancestral grave at night and remained anonymous in the sexual act.”

Returning to reality, what caught me off guard was how ordinary life continued in Berlin a year before the end of the war. Electricity, telephones, gas, water, trains all continued to be available. People went to work each day. They drank with friends, went to the cinema and enjoyed time in the parks of the city.  Bombs would cause damage. Repairs would be made to infrastructure and bombed out Berliners would seek refuge with family and neighbours. I realized life had to continue but had not considered how much of life remained routine.

However, the bombing is growing more intense. After attacking London with V-1’s the retaliatory attacks on Berlin are larger and more often especially in Central Berlin. Oppenheimer walks through the devastation of a bombing as he goes to the Reich Chancellery. Bodies, rubble, the occasional time fused bomb going off create a form of hell on earth. 

Gilbers writes:

It might be a controversial question whether all humans were equal before God, but there was no doubt in regard to the bombs; they claimed any life.  

In real life I knew a woman who had been an air raid warden during the bombing Blitz of London. Forty years later she could not be in a room with popping balloons.

Life’s little pleasures are rationed to the point of rarity. Oppenheimer’s new status as an investigator for the Nazis lets him enjoy a cup of real coffee or a cigarette. As well, he gains easy access to the methamphetamines that many people, not just the military, use to keep going.

There is a mix of historical figures amidst the fictional characters.

Oppenheimer meets up with ctual Berlin police officer Arthur Nebe. He was a rival with Oppenheimer in the Berlin police force. While neither as skilled nor as successful on examinations as Oppenheimer,  Nebe achieved his ambitions by becoming an early Nazi party member, moving up in the ranks, and avidly pursuing anti-Jewish policies.

Later Oppenheimer meets a fictional police colleague who spent time in Poland where he participated in the murder of thousands, mostly Jews. He reflected the ordinary Germans who carried out the Holacaust. Every German had choices during the war. He tells Oppenheimer the few who refused to murder were berated but had no futher punishment. Oppenheimer wonders if his regret is over committing murder or self-pity at being ordered to kill men, women and children.

Hilde introduces him to members of the traditional German intelligence service under Admiral Canaris who are working for Germany and against Hitler. They have insights into the investigation not revealed by Vogler.

In one of the most surreal scenes I have read in a historical novel the German Nazi leader Goebbels, wanting Oppenheimer to have freedom to investigate, orderss:

“For my part, you are suspended from affiliation to the Jewish people until the end of the investigation. Until then, you are to be treated as an Aryan.”

When convenient for the Nazis, a Jew becomes an Aryan.

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Germania by Harald Gilbers