Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is enjoying the holidays. For Christmas, his whole family is in Three Pines to enjoy the sledding, the exceptional food, the ice skating, and each other’s company. So when he’s asked to help with the security for a visiting professor’s lecture in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, he is a little annoyed to be pulled from spending time with his grandkids, but he knows that a police officer’s work isn’t about sticking to a time clock.

He visits the local auditorium where the lecture will be and thinks that it looks like a simple assignment. It is a lecture on statistics, during the holidays. How many people would really be interesting in coming? But then he goes home and looks up the professor on the internet, and he realizes that this is no ordinary assignment.

Professor Abigail Robinson was originally hired by the Canadian government to collect data on the recent pandemic and to report on how Canada cane make the most of its recovery and its resources moving forward. Since the vaccine became available, the health risk had passed, but there are still remnants of the virus around—people are still afraid of loss, of shortages, of another pandemic coming through and stealing the rest of the resources they have.

When the government agency that hired Professor Robinson heard her conclusions, they refused to make it public. So she took it to the people herself. She spoke at lectures and put it on the internet, and her ideas are starting to go viral. When she suggests that those people who are a drain on resources should be terminated, that’s where her audience splits. Some think that her ideas are genius and can save Canada from the devastation of the pandemic. And others think that her ideas are an abomination and should not be given air time.

Gamache and his officers pay careful attention the night of the lecture, making sure that no weapons get inside and that all the children in the room are accounted for in case there is crowding or shoving that could cause them harm. They are on guard, so when someone sets fireworks off in the crowded building, they can react quickly and keep the crowd from getting hurt. But when someone starts shooting at Professor Robinson, Gamache and his team need all their wits to keep everyone safe.

The next days, as they investigate how a gun got into the auditorium and why Professor Robinson had chosen to come to their corner of Quebec for her lecture, Gamache and his Surete officers find themselves peeling back layers of truths, asking questions whose answers only lead to more questions. And when the professor’s assistant and best friend is murdered, they have to ask if she was murdered for something she knew, or if it was a case of mistaken identity and the professor was the intended victim.

The murder investigation uncovers horrific betrayals, from the cruelties we witnessed during the pandemic to the government-backed torture of psychiatric patients under the guise of experiments known as MK Ultra. Gamache and his officers, his friends, his family, see the first-hand effects of torture and inhumanity and are faced with the choice to seek personal revenge on those who threaten them or embrace the mercy and grace that will allow them to retain their own humanity in the presence of evil.

A Madness of Crowds is number 17 in Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Armand Gamache Series. These novels, based in the small Canadian town of Three Pines which can’t even be found on a map, are filled with memorable characters, wit, charm, intelligence, and an unflinching look into the eyes of evil. While these do carry some story threads from book to book, they can also all be read as stand-alone novels, although I should warn you that they are addictive.

Once you set foot in Three Pines, you’ll just want to keep coming back, to sit for a while in the bistro to warm up in front of the fire with tasty food and drink, or to wander the aisles of Myrna’s bookshop, or to be captivated by Myrna’s paintings, or to see what Ruth and her duck Rosa are up to now. The characters of Three Pines become friends and a source of comfort for whatever is happening out in the rest of the world, for even whatever is happening in the rest of Quebec, as Gamache and his officers make a dent in the crimes that they uncover.

There are times that these books can be difficult to take, and A Madness of Crowds is no exception. There are some pretty inhumane ideas in these pages, and it’s difficult to hold that mirror up and see bits and pieces of ourselves in that, but that’s the kind of commitment that Penny asks with these books. If Gamache can go through the trials and tribulations he has survived all these years, we can sit and spend time with the ghosts and the snakes as well as with the brownies right out of the oven or the first ever hot chocolate in the hands of a Sudanese woman who suffered horribly but survived and is now on the list for a Nobel Peace Prize. Because through it all, there is always hope.

I listened to the audio version of A Madness of Crowds, and Robert Bathurst does a masterful job of keeping this large number of characters distinctive. He knows just how to hit those comedic moments, and he brings so much warmth and grace to Gamache and the two officers he works with most, Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste, that you can listen to these officers investigate the worst crimes but still be able to fall asleep at night. It takes a special narrator to keep up with Louise Penny’s intelligence and sharp wit, and Bathurst not only keeps up but adds extra value to the books with his skillful delivery. I love listening to him read these novels, and he helps me believe that not matter how many monsters there are in these books, all will be well.