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Content Warning: The source material features depictions of traumatic injury, gun violence, and misuse of opioids.
The work opens with a flashback to a significant case in the career of Armand Gamache, head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec. Gamache is anxious as he leads a tactical team. The group is rescuing a young agent, Paul Morin, who has been taken hostage in connection with a factory raid. At this stage, however, Penny has not informed the reader what has led Gamache there or whom Gamache is reassuring over his headset. Just as Gamache “realize[s] he’[s] made a mistake,” the narrative shifts to the present day: a few months later, in another location entirely (2).
In the present day, Gamache is in Québec City, visiting his mentor, Émile Comeau, to recover from an unspecified trauma likely related to the opening scene. Gamache’s wife, Reine-Marie, bids them both farewell and leaves Gamache their beloved German shepherd, Henri.
The two men and the dog set out for breakfast. Gamache reflects that this is his first trip to the city for his own recuperation, rather than to assist his mentor with physically demanding household tasks. Émile notices a new scar on his protégé’s forehead and hopes that his new hobby of historical research will bring him respite. Gamache has not confided any of the details of his recent suffering.
Penny shifts point of view to the Literary and Historical Society of Québec City, an archive and cultural institution for the city’s Anglophone minority. Most of the board members are elderly, focused on the politics of their small community. One of its longtime members, Elizabeth MacWhirter, reflects that the young Presbyterian minister, Tom Hancock, is a rare sign of hope for the future. Hancock has faith that the Anglophone community will maintain itself. He is also distinguishing himself with his daring, as he and his middle-aged rowing partner are entering the city’s winter ice-canoeing race.
The otherwise uneventful meeting is interrupted by the arrival of Augustin Renaud, and the board members are dismayed by his request to speak to them. Penny does not explain, at this point, that Renaud is a noted, if eccentric, champion of Québec history. He is especially obsessed with finding the burial site of the city’s historical founder, Samuel de Champlain. Renaud is Francophone and generally regarded as an enemy to the English, as Anglophone Canadians are known in the city. The board rejects the request, and MacWhirter goes outside to inform the visitor.
The action returns to Gamache, researching in the library of the Literary and Historical Society. He reads a letter from his protégé, Isabelle Lacoste, who asks after his health and reports that a recent case of theirs is being officially investigated—again, likely the events from the opening, but Penny does not explicate. Thinking of Lacoste makes Gamache flash back to the rescue mission, first to his own grave injuries and then to “the funerals […] one bitter cold day, to bury those who had died under his command in that factory” (21).
Gamache takes in his surroundings, marveling at the history and quiet of the library, an institution he had never imagined existing before this visit. He reads a letter from his friend Gabri, asking after his health. Gabri also asks for Gamache to consider that his partner, Olivier, is innocent of the murder he was recently imprisoned for. He writes this every day.
As he reads and quietly chats with his companion, Gamache reflects that the library is a microcosm of Québec: Its small, treasured nature reflects the minority status of the city’s English speakers. He wonders if the atmosphere of escape he notes is one the institution cultivates intentionally. But even the library cannot drown out his recent memories of tragedy.
Gamache has dinner with his mentor, describing his interest in the 1759 Battle of Québec, which definitively ended French control of the province. Gamache shows Émile Gabri’s letter and explains that it concerns a past case in his small village of Three Pines, between Montreal and the border with Vermont. The events, which took place in Penny’s previous Gamache novel, The Brutal Telling, concerned the murder of an elderly man known as the Hermit. The man’s body was found in Olivier’s bistro, part of his antiques shop. It came out that Olivier had been the old Hermit’s only friend, drawn to his trove of priceless antiques, and that his were the only prints found in the dead man’s home, which was revealed as the site of the murder. His bistro also contained the murder weapon and other objects from the dead man’s cache of artifacts.
Gabri, however, insists in his daily letter that it makes no sense for Olivier to have put the body in his own place of business and thus that he must be innocent of the murder, though not of greed and exploitation. Émile echoes Gabri’s question: “Why would Olivier move the body, Armand?” (25). Gamache’s mind takes him back to the factory and an injury to his beloved longtime protégé, Jean-Guy Beauvoir.
The next day, Gamache has breakfast, taking in the atmosphere of the city’s preparations for the annual winter Carnaval de Québec. As he walks toward the Literary and Historical Society, Gamache notices a police presence. A young officer tries to shoo him away, but his superior recognizes Gamache and speaks to him. The senior officer, Inspector Langlois, is with the city police. After Gamache explains that he is only there as a private citizen, Langlois tells him a body was found in the library’s basement.
Langlois asks for his help, explaining that the librarian, Winnie, speaks French poorly, while his English is less than proficient. Gamache refuses, and Penny notes that he “felt a tremble in his hand, blessedly hidden by his thick mitts” (44). Langlois admits he knows the request is a profound imposition, clearly aware of the other man’s recent trauma.
The point of view turns to Elizabeth MacWhirter, inside the library. She, too, recognizes Gamache, from the news reports of his recent injury and the deaths of Sûreté officers in the factory raid. She decides, impulsively, to try and intercept him. They stop for a coffee, and MacWhirter explains that a telephone repairperson found the body. MacWhirter begs for his help, certain the library will be engulfed in social and political scandal without an ally.
When she tactfully alludes to his recent ordeal, Gamache flashes back to a conversation with his agent, Paul Morin. Penny does not yet explain the significance of the exchange, a casual chat about Christmas celebrations. The reader will later learn that Morin was the agent held hostage and that the raid in the novel’s opening resulted in the deaths of multiple officers, Morin included.
For his part, Gamache recognizes MacWhirter’s surname as an old one in the city, indicating her wealthy antecedents. MacWhirter makes one more plea for help, explaining that the dead man is Augustin Renaud. Gamache reflects, “Now he knew why Elizabeth MacWhirter was so desperate. And he knew she had reason to be” (54). As Penny will explicate later, Renaud’s quest for Champlain’s burial site lies at the heart of Québec’s political tensions between its Anglophone minority and French majority.
Penny’s opening chapters establish that the novel’s world is one of duality, divisions, and uncertainties, in both its settings and in the struggles of her protagonist. Gamache is torn between his desire to recover and rejoin the world and the enduring power of his recent traumas. To underline that he cannot speak of them, Penny herself does not, alluding only to grave injury, death, and loss that somehow centers on Paul Morin, a character first introduced in The Brutal Telling as Gamache’s newest protégé and a promising investigator. The oblique references to Morin and the evocation of the funeral scenes are key to how Penny introduces the themes of Guilt and Grief.
The thematic importance of The Power of the Past is epitomized in the world of the city’s small Anglophone community: Its cherished historical society and library are virtually unknown but soon torn apart by murder. Its members, especially Elizabeth MacWhirter, are aware of how insular and small their world has become, but they cherish it for that very vulnerability. The library is a literal repository of their culture and language, increasingly imperiled given the demographics of modern Québec, where Francophones are the majority and laws protect language access. MacWhirter’s quiet terror at the death of Renaud, so soon after he was refused admission by the society, indicates that even amateur historians can be a threat in a world where the political tensions of the past remain deeply felt by ordinary people. Gamache’s bilingualism is a key aspect of his character, befitting his role as mediator. He intended history to be a refuge from his life of murder investigations, but in this novel, he will learn that the distant past can reveal the darker side of human nature.
Penny’s choice of a new setting and introduction of new characters further emphasizes Gamache’s vulnerability and new doubts about himself and his skills. In previous installments, including The Brutal Telling, Gamache acts as mentor to younger agents and sometimes a confiding friend to the inhabitants of Three Pines. Here, he seeks out his own teacher, indicating the depths of his wounds and subsequent need for security and comfort. His beloved wife, his emotional anchor throughout the series, recognizes the extent of his pain and his desire for a mentor figure.
Even far from home, Gamache faces his increasing notoriety, as though he belongs to the world, or his nation, even more than to himself. His uncertainties go beyond the tragedy at the factory, however, as Gabri’s letter indicates. Olivier’s arrest for the death of the Hermit fractured the otherwise peaceful world of Three Pines. Henri, adopted there after the death of his previous owner, is one of Gamache’s tangible links to the village. The theme of Mistrust Within and Between Communities applies equally to the novel’s two settings, the urban world of Québec City and the remote village that is never far from Gamache’s thoughts.
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By Louise Penny