Gratitude Monday: Reading mayhem

Oh-boy, oh-boy, oh-boy—I picked up the newest release in the Commissario Brunetti series by Donna Leon Saturday at the library. Then I spent the weekend tearing through the canals and cuisine of Venice, and it’s promising to be one of Leon’s better outings. (The last one, famed around an opera singer, was, como si dice, lame. It happens.)

But I’m also on the waiting list for Tana French’s latest in the Dublin Murder Squad series, and ditto Louise Penny’s newest featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec. Penny’s is published this week and French’s in October, so I’ll be drip-feeding the mayhem.

I really wish that Penny had chosen a different name for her hero, because I continually “hear” him as ganache, and I get distracted by thoughts of couverture and the like, particularly since, like Leon, she spends a lot of time describing meals the various characters eat. Although I get a little tired of the maple sugar-cured bacon, and I frankly doubt how a small, albeit quirky, village could support both a bistro and a boulangerie. 

(Guilty secret: I'm afraid that when I'm deep in one of these puzzles I don't eat nearly as well as the characters. This weekend I subsided mainly on plain Greek yoghurt, with some granola and blackcurrants mixed in.)

However, even though last year’s Gamache was a disappointment, I know that Penny at her best is worth waiting for. And French frankly writes the hell out of every story she comes up with, and I love the fact that each outing has been from the perspective of a different member of the Murder Squad. Last year’s, The Secret Place, is one of those books that you call in sick to work so you can finish it. (Although you don't spend time in any of her stories on food. Her cops may grab a doughnut or a bag of crisps on their way to the underside of Dublin, and that's about it.)

So today I’m grateful for having well-written police procedurals to provide respite from the political silly season, and a slight change from my usual heavy-duty history reading. Also—hurrah for libraries!