I’m surprised and very sorry to say that I didn’t like All The Devils Are Here. I am still in the fairly early stages of making my way gradually (and with great enjoyment) through this series but was very happy to read this latest one out of order. I was very disappointed.
Part of the problem is that Gamache is not in Quebec and Three Pines but in Paris, and taking him and Reine-Marie out of where they really belong doesn’t work well for me. I understand Louise Penny’s profound personal reasons for doing this, but I’m afraid it doesn’t make for a good read for me. I also found that the persistent, almost hagiographic admiration of Armand by almost everyone he has ever known became very cloying.
What I found hardest to take, though, was the style. Penny makes incessant use of not writing in full sentences with clauses, but making those clauses sentences themselves.
Or sometimes even a paragraph.
It became almost unreadable for me. In the first chapter, for example, we get dozens of examples like:
“But this time was different. This time Stephen had added something. Something Armand had never heard from him before.
A specificity.”
And this, just a few pages later:
“Son. Stephen had never called him that. Not once in fifty years. Garçon, yes. Boy. It was said with great affection. But it wasn’t the same. As son.”
Seriously? “But it wasn’t the same. As son.”? Come on – Louise Penny is much, much better than that; she’s a really fine writer and cheap, irritating tricks like that demean her. I found myself wincing regularly and skimming from quite early on.
So, a serious disappointment for me. I can’t bring myself to give a Louise Penny book one star, but I really didn’t like it and I hope she returns to form with her next.
(My thanks to Little, Brown for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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