Chat live with author Louise Penny
Join USA TODAY on Dec. 6 for a Facebook live chat with author Louise Penny about her new novel, “Kingdom of the Blind” (Minotaur).
#BookmarkThis is a series of live video chats with best-selling authors, and fans can submit questions in advance and during the chat.
“Kingdom of the Blind” is the 14th book in the Chief Inspector Gamache mystery series, set in Canada.
In “Kingdom,” Gamache remains suspended from the police force because of decisions he made related to Quebec’s opioid crisis; meanwhile, he is named an executor of the will of a woman he never knew.
A blizzard plays a central role in the story, too. (It’s cold up north!)
The Gamache series, which began with “Still Life” in 2005, has become in- creasingly popular. The last book, 2017’s “Glass Houses,” was the first to make its debut at No. 1 on USA TODAY’s BestSelling Books list.
Perhaps their appeal is tied to the books’ small-town intimacy – many are set in the fictional town of Three Pines, Quebec, amid Gamache’s circle of friends (he has a happy marriage to Reine-Marie, too) – juxtaposed against the brutality of modern crime.
And Gamache himself, a smart investigator who tries to see the best in people, adds to the improbable feel-good quality of Penny’s dark stories.
In a review of 2014’s “The Long Way Home” for USA TODAY, Don Oldenburg called Penny a “superb author” who “continues her ascent to the top echelon of today’s mystery writers.”
Penny, a former CBC radio journalist, lives in a small village south of Montreal, not unlike Three Pines.
The details
When: Dec. 6 at 1 p.m. EST/10 a.m. PST. Where: facebook.com/usatodayLife RSVP: Select “going” on this event page