

The impetus to get to the truth is increased mightily knowing the entire family is in extreme danger, pushing Armand to try and overcome the schism that had grown between him and Daniel through the years. The means Armand is pushed into investigating himself, aided by Jean-Guy who returns to his role as homicide detective like a duck to water, and Reine-Marie, using her extensive skills as an archivist. After a bistro family dinner, Armand's beloved godfather, the 93 year old billionaire, Stephen Horowitz, is hit deliberately by a delivery van, his life left hanging by the most tenuous of threads.Īrmand calls Paris police chief, Claude Dussault, and his second in command, Irena Fontaine, leads the investigation, but when a body is found in Stephen's apartment, Armand is not certain the police can be trusted.

Former homicide detective, Jean-Guy Beauvoir quit the Surete du Quebec and is now working for a private engineering corporation, facing resentment from a colleague who feels his job should have been hers. Armand and his wife, Reine-Marie are visiting their children, heavily pregnant Annie and banker, Daniel, and their families living here. The title of Louise Penny's latest in the Armand Gamache series is part of a quote from Ariel in Shakespeare's The Tempest, 'Hell is empty and all the devils are here', dimming considerably the city of light, Paris, where the Gamache family are to find themselves locked into a nightmare that threatens all and everyone they hold dear. His own family.įor even the City of Light casts long shadows. In order to find the truth, Gamache will have to decide whether he can trust his friends, his colleagues, his instincts, his own past.

Soon the whole family is caught up in a web of lies and deceit. It sends them deep into the secrets Armand's godfather has kept for decades.Ī gruesome discovery in Stephen's Paris apartment makes it clear the secrets are more rancid, the danger far greater and more imminent, than they realized.

When a strange key is found in Stephen's possession it sends Armand, his wife Reine-Marie, and his former second-in-command at the Sûreté, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, from the top of the Tour d'Eiffel, to the bowels of the Paris Archives, from luxury hotels to odd, coded, works of art. Walking home together after the meal, they watch in horror as Stephen is knocked down and critically injured in what Gamache knows is no accident, but a deliberate attempt on the elderly man's life. On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather as a family for a bistro dinner with Armand's godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. The 16th novel by #1 bestselling author Louise Penny finds Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec investigating a sinister plot in the City of Light
