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- [00:00]
Ryan Reynolds
Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two year contracts, they said, what the are you talking about? You insane Hollywood. So to recap, we're cutting the price of mint unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try@mintmobile.com switch.
- [00:25]
Louise Penny
$45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees. Extra Speed slower above 40 gigabyte.
- [00:37]
Kate
Well, Happy Thanksgiving to you listeners of the Bookcase with Kate and Charlie. If you're listening on Thanksgiving Day and preparing to have your turkey, then you have a rare treat to join you on your Thanksgiving dinner, which is our conversation today with Louise Penny. If you're listening to us after Thanksgiving and eating turkey sandwiches, we welcome you anyway. Kate, hi. Hi.
- [00:59]
Charlie Gibson
Either way, I hope we catch you on the way up the tryptophan ladder or on the way down the tryptophan sl. Either way, happy Thanksgiving to you. I mean, we've had some great guests lately. I mean, I love all of our guests, but I mean, you know, we've been delivering some good stuff lately. Ann Patchett, Niall Williams, and again, we previewed this last episode. But I wanna say we really do read the reader's comments and a lot of you wrote us about Louise Penny. And I hadn't read Louise Penny until you guys wrote us about her. And I because up until, I don't know, maybe five or six years ago, I thought that if you were reading a series, you were generally reading something that was a guilty pleasure or that you had to compromise literary value in order to sort of stick with the series. And now I've fallen in love with serieses.
- [01:43]
Louise Penny
Is.
- [01:44]
Charlie Gibson
Is. And I've fallen in love with Louise serieses. Many series, multiple serieses.
- [01:49]
Kate
I got you.
- [01:49]
Charlie Gibson
Okay. And I've fallen in love with Inspector Gamache by Louise Penny. And not only have I fallen in love with her plot and her characters, there's some really good writing in some of these series. And Inspector Gamache is a very well written series and it's very engaging and I thank you listene for bringing Louise Penny to my attention because I really enjoyed the journey. And now I'm reading all of them, including me, Kate.
- [02:14]
Kate
It wasn't new to me. I go back a good ways with Louise Penny. She started writing the Gamache series of books. Armand Gamache in 2005. This latest one, the Gray Wolf, is her 19th in the series. And Kate's right. You know, you sometimes think if I'm reading a series of books with the same series of characters, it's going to get repetitive. You know, I was thinking of that as we talked to her. The great composer Vivaldi, Igor Stravinsky, who was a great composer himself, Vivaldi wrote over 400 concertos. And Stravinsky said, actually, Vivaldi didn't write 400 concertos. He wrote one concerto 400 times.
- [02:53]
Charlie Gibson
Well, so basically he was saying that Vivaldi was like Taco Bell food. It's the same food served about 50 different ways.
- [03:04]
Kate
All different kinds, but the same taste. Yes, you're right. Anyway, but Louise Penny, her genius, I think, is that she has written 19 distinctive Gamache novels with some recurring characters. I mean, everybody is recurring. That's in Three Pines, Gamache and Jean Guy Beauvoir, who is his assistant, and some of the characters in Three Pines. But each novel, sometimes she brings back characters from an earlier novel. Not the main ones, but other people. But for the most part, they are very, very different books. And as I say, I think that's her genius.
- [03:40]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah. And they're very well written. And I've enjoyed Falling down the Rabbit Hole so much with Louise Penny. And as I say, I've been reading slash, listening to all of them, thanks to you listeners. And Gray Wolf was not a disappointment. Again, you come to the 19th book in the series and you think to yourself, well, at this point, what is she doing?
- [03:59]
Louise Penny
She's.
- [04:00]
Charlie Gibson
I'm not, you know, what mystery has she not solved? And why aren moving out of Three Pines if there are that many murders there? But the 19th book is just amazing. It's a page turner and it is engaging and unique like all of the rest of them.
- [04:14]
Kate
Well, Three Pines, as Louise Penny, readers know, is a small town in the Quebec province of Canada, not found on any map. So, you know, it's pretty small. It's like when we were talking to Niall Williams about faja. It's a small little town. However, in the Gray Wolf, Inspector Gamache, who lives now in Three Pines, expands out to save the world. Now, that's. That's a. That's a little bit of a stretch, but she makes it perfectly logical. Yeah, I bought it.
- [04:41]
Charlie Gibson
I bought it. I mean, Inspector saving the world, and I was rooting for him.
- [04:46]
Kate
Well, this is a book about eco terrorism and a malevolent plot to poison the water supply of Montreal, which, if you extrapolate that gets people afraid about their water supplies all over the world. If you can do that to Montreal, you can do that to any city. It creates havoc around the world. But Gamache will step in and will save the day, and he will do it in wonderful fashion. We're going to do a two part conversation with Louise Penny. First of all, because she's delightful to talk to.
- [05:17]
Charlie Gibson
She really is.
- [05:18]
Kate
She is. And secondly, because she's written such a great series of books. So in this first week with Louise Penny, we'll talk mostly about the Gray Wolf. And the new book, which immediately was number one on the New York Times bestseller list, was named as Katie Will Sort of Stumble over, was named one of the 10 best mysteries of the year by the Washington Post. We'll talk about that in this first show and then the second show next week. We'll talk mostly about sort of her overall approach to writing, which she does very well.
- [05:46]
Charlie Gibson
She does it very, very well. And as I say, there are a few series I've fallen in love with. William Kent Kruger's Cork O'Connor series, the Thursday Murder Club series, and now I think Inspector Gamache will be among them. Anytime I see Louise Penny and it says an Inspector Gamache novel, I will be picking it up and I will be doing it with pride. I will not hide it.
- [06:05]
Kate
19 books in the series, one every year with the exception of last year. And as she says, the challenge is not to write the same book over and over again. And I do that by having a different theme. You'll hear her say that in our conversation. She does say it's 19 books, but she treats it all as sort of an Overall book with 19 chapters. Anyway, a fascinating conversation, we thought, with Louise Penny. We hope you will too. We will do it over two weeks. We start right now. Louise Penny, we always say it is a pleasure to have our writer for the week with us in the bookcase. But it's a special pleasure since we are. We are groupies. And there are many, many groupies. But let me start. With all due respect, Louise.
- [06:51]
Louise Penny
Oh, no, that's never a good. No, it's never start with that.
- [06:54]
Charlie Gibson
It's right up there with you. You know what your problem is?
- [06:57]
Kate
You have created an idyllic, friendly little community of Three Pines. But I wouldn't live there, Louise, on a bet, because there's a good chance I'd wind up murdered.
- [07:08]
Louise Penny
Oh, you'd be the first.
- [07:09]
Kate
You're in line already.
- [07:10]
Louise Penny
You don't even Live there.
- [07:12]
Kate
So why. Why would anybody want to live there, given the odds are pretty great that.
- [07:18]
Louise Penny
They'Re cheap housing, for one thing.
- [07:21]
Charlie Gibson
Cheap housing. I like it.
- [07:24]
Louise Penny
Well, you know, as you know, because I know you're joking, because most of the murders don't actually happen in Three Pines. That's. That's now become the sort of the place where the investigators. Because, Louise, I may be off by.
- [07:38]
Kate
One or two, but I've counted in your 19 books nine murders that happened in three pints.
- [07:44]
Louise Penny
Out of 19. That is not bad.
- [07:46]
Kate
No, really?
- [07:48]
Louise Penny
Look. That's less than that.
- [07:49]
Kate
Well, yes, but you're.
- [07:50]
Louise Penny
That's even less than a third.
- [07:51]
Kate
But you're running out of possible victims.
- [07:54]
Louise Penny
Well, yeah, and because the thing is that one person dies and the other someone else did it. So, you know, it is getting a little low. But there's a certain amount. I do admit that there is a certain amount of suspending disbelief in. In. In this. But, you know, I think that's what we do in fiction. We can. We can do anything.
- [08:13]
Kate
Sure.
- [08:14]
Louise Penny
Yeah.
- [08:14]
Charlie Gibson
Oh, yeah. My mother and I used to be big fans of Murder, She Wrote.
- [08:18]
Louise Penny
And.
- [08:18]
Charlie Gibson
And anytime somebody showed up in Jessica Fletcher's life, we'd be like, don't be friends with Jessica Fletcher. You won't survive.
- [08:26]
Louise Penny
It's like the Star Trek and the. Anyone who wore the. What was the color?
- [08:30]
Charlie Gibson
The red shirt. Exactly. Gray wolf, which, by the way, was just named the Washington Post one of the top 10 mysteries of the year. So congratulations on that. But in this book, the stakes are inordinately high. And I was thinking to myself, because it's about the water supply, it will affect the whole world. And I thought to myself, oh, my gosh, where does she take the stakes from here? I mean, once you get into a certain number of books, do you have to create stakes that are that high?
- [08:56]
Louise Penny
That is a really interesting question, because as Charlie's pointed out, this is book 19. I write about essentially the same location, and if not Three Pines, then at least the province of Quebec, for the most part, with the same cast of characters. And so the challenge is not to write the same book over and over again. And that would not interest me at all. I don't have to write. I write for the love of it and I write for the challenge of it. So each book needs to be different. Do that by having a different theme. Murder. It's not. The books are never about murder. They're never about the crime. They are very proudly crime novels and murder mysteries, but that's not the Focus wouldn't interest me at all to spend a year writing about a murder. So what I try to do is I think of each book seriously. I think of it like a symphony. And I think of the 19 books as one book with 19 chapters. And so there has to be an ebb and a flow and a largo and then, you know, the great crescendo. So I tend to go, you know, something loud, something big, like the gray wolf, and then something quieter, something more intimate. Sometimes it's a microcosm, sometimes it's the macrocosm. That's the beauty, isn't it, of creativity. You could do anything, I can do anything. And I just hope that the readers follow along and trust me enough to come along. But the train is leaving the station.
- [10:31]
Charlie Gibson
In this book also, though, you have characters that come back from a previous mystery, the beautiful mystery. When you finished that book, did you think to yourself, I'm not done with these monks? I guess when you look at a book like Gray Wolf, I guess my question really is, where do you start? What's the first thing that comes to, you know, when you finish a book, you're like, these characters are going to come back. I don't know when, but at some.
- [10:53]
Louise Penny
Point, you know, having just said that, I think of it as a symphony, which I do. But there's also a lot of similarities to art, to painting. And so it's very hard to say where a book starts because I have notebooks, and sometimes I just make notes. Sometimes it's a word, sometimes it's a phrase from poetry, sometimes it's a clipping from a newspaper. And I just make notes of all of these things, and it becomes like a pointillist work of art. And then eventually, an image begins to appear, and I can begin to see it and imagine the conversations. And little by little, it gels. It comes together. So rarely is it one single thing. But this one, oddly enough, it was something that plays a small role in the book, but that I found a number of years ago. And it was the story of chartreuse liquor. The liquor.
- [11:55]
Charlie Gibson
The liquor.
- [11:55]
Louise Penny
Yeah, yeah. The alcohol, not the color. Although, not coincidentally, it's the same color.
- [12:02]
Charlie Gibson
But how did it. So, to walk me through that, you stumble upon chartreuse. What happens next? And why won't it let go of you? And how do you then build the plaque around that that becomes the whole novel?
- [12:13]
Louise Penny
Well, the story of chartreuse is so fascinating. It's made, like many of these liqueurs are, by monks. In this case, the Carthusian monks who live in France. And the recipe which was considered an elixir, as again many of these things were, was made hundreds of years ago and only two monks ever have the recipe. And when one monk dies or is incapable, it's passed on to someone else. This has been the case for centuries. They've managed to keep it a secret and all sorts of liquor companies have tried to figure it out, they've tried to steal the recipe, the monks have been expelled from Paris, they've been sent all over the world. And somehow two monks have always kept this secret. So for me, as a crime writer, just as a human being, I found it fascinating. But as a crime writer, something that is a secret and a mystery, well, you know, I cut it out, put it on the cork board and would walk by it for years and just sort of think, one day, one day that's going to feature in a book. And the day came, I just, I suddenly thought, I think that, I think that can play a role in the gray wolf.
- [13:25]
Kate
As Katie mentioned, the gray wolf is really about eco terrorism and the contamination of a city's water supply that's designed to create panic throughout the world. I would say, Louise Penny, that you know a little too much about how to contaminate and poison Montreal's water supply. Too much for my comfort level. Is that a latent terrorist streak in you or did you research it?
- [13:51]
Louise Penny
Honestly, you've gone, Charlie Gibson, you have gone in the course of just minutes accusing me of genocide of an entire village and now being an echo terrorist.
- [14:04]
Charlie Gibson
Isn't he adorable that way?
- [14:06]
Louise Penny
Yes, yes, he's a keeper. I'm afraid that some, you know, someone's going to start clue in when I do because we do such strange searches online. You think you know how to murder someone, blah, blah or. And we also have very strange conversations over dinner in restaurants with people. But one thing, yeah, one thing leads to another and it becomes quite scary when you start realizing that these things are possible. Not easy, you know, it's not the sort of thing an average person could do, but it is possible. And it is certainly something that the anti terrorist organizations worldwide are trying to guard against. But how do you protect, especially when a lot of these, these drinking water systems are reservoirs. How do you stop it from, from being contaminated? I mean, frankly we're contaminated anyway with plastics and other stuff, but, but it is interesting.
- [14:56]
Charlie Gibson
I wonder if readers are ready. I mean, cause now we've been through a real life pandemic, so we know what it's like when the world literally comes to a close and basic services don't work. I wonder if that probably also helps with the believability of a plot like that.
- [15:12]
Louise Penny
Well, if you look at the world today, I mean, it's almost impossible. Look at what Israel managed to do with the walkie talkies. It's almost impossible these days to come up with something that hasn't already been done. That is unbelievable. The unbelievable has become pedestrian once again.
- [15:33]
Kate
In Gray Wolf, you introduce a level of corruption or suspected corruption in the upper levels of Canada's government and among monks. Are you cynical about these institutions of government and the church, or is it just fun to play?
- [15:49]
Louise Penny
I'm often disappointed. I don't think I'm cynical. I think it would be very difficult these days to be a realist and not be disappointed in the leadership of just about anything, whether the government or the church or businesses, to not be careful, to not be wary. But the book, the books, all of them, There's a thread that goes through all of them, and it's a couplet from Auden's poem to Melville. And it essentially starts with, goodness existed. That was the new knowledge. His terror had to blow itself quite out to let him see it. So the books are absolutely about terror and about cynicism, about dismay and despair, but mostly they're about goodness. And that's how I feel. I mean, I've met enough politicians. You have too. I've met enough human beings. There is a yearning to be decent. I know that no matter how someone votes, no matter what they do, I think people at their core want to be decent. I think there are very few people who are really nasty and bad actors.
- [16:58]
Kate
So we'll interrupt Louise for just a moment. Come back to her after these messages.
- [17:14]
Charlie Gibson
Thank you for sticking with us. In a minute, more of our conversation with Louise Penny.
- [17:19]
Kate
Yeah, in this second part, too, I'm sort of fascinated. If you've read any of the Gamache books, you know that there are sort of four signpost that he talks to other detectives about things that everybody should keep in mind, I think in all situations. Four things that you need to say to yourself, I was wrong, I'm sorry, I don't know. And I need help. Now, those four things really can stick in your mind, of things you should be saying to yourself at all times. Where did they come from? It's kind of an interesting story where they came from. And we'll talk about that in this second part of our conversation with Louise Penny. It's an interesting conundrum that you face or contradiction because you're writing about the elements of a mystery, which can be murder or it can be whatever, terrorism, etc. And then you also introduce that element of human goodness. And we talked, we were, we were very fortunate last week to talk to Niall Williams, who has just written a marvelous new book called the Time of the Child, which is out just in time for Christmas. And he said to us, the biggest risk I took in this book was writing about human goodness. Now that has stuck in my mind and it occurs to me that in many respects the hardest thing to write about are the most basic parts of human nature and character. Without seeming trite, how do you do that?
- [18:37]
Louise Penny
By believing it, by not having it be a marketing ploy or something that is meant to sell books. By having lived it, by having known terror and coming out the other end and understanding that goodness really does exist. By being endlessly fascinated by people who choose to be decent. I think that it takes so much more courage to be kind than it does to be cruel. It's so easy to be cruel. To make the cutting remark, to find fault takes absolutely no skill at all to find fault, it's so obvious. It's a whole other thing to see the fault but choose to focus on the decency, on what is good, on what is positive.
- [19:21]
Kate
And so how do you handle the issue of writing about darkness, which is mystery and murder, et cetera, and balance that with human goodness?
- [19:31]
Louise Penny
Well, because I think the two can happen simultaneously. I can have something terrible happen but still be a happy person. I think just because something bad has happened doesn't mean something good can't also be happening. At the same time, I think the books are about so much else besides the crime they're about, and you mentioned it Charlie a moment ago, they're about duality. They're about the public face and the inner thoughts. They're about what we say and what we're really thinking. They're about this beautiful, intentionally hyper idyllic place. I've been very affected by the South American writers and the magical realism, the Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Isabel Allende. And I intentionally brought that to Three Pines, which is a village only ever found by people lost. It's not on any map, but I think it is certainly a challenge to make decency and goodness in those choices also entertaining and riveting.
- [20:32]
Kate
The wonderful writer Sue Miller said to us, I have to as a writer find a redeeming quality in even the most reprehensible of my characters. I have to find that and she talked about someone who's committed a murder in one of her books. And she said I had to find something good in that person to be able to right their malevolence.
- [20:53]
Louise Penny
Isn't that wonderful? That's right. That's right. There are no mountains without valleys, no darkness without a little bit of light. It's Sister Prejean, who, as you know, worked with people on death row, said that no one of us is as bad as the worst thing we've ever done. And that's important to be able to write that. That complexity of character.
- [21:14]
Charlie Gibson
My sister is a huge fan of yours. Just building on this conversation of human decency. She is also a decent person, but she runs a big. She runs a big.
- [21:22]
Louise Penny
With great literary.
- [21:24]
Charlie Gibson
Exactly. With great literary taste. But she runs a big department. Department at her company. And she says before anybody starts on her team, she talks to them about the four signposts of knowledge, the four ways that you can learn the four sentences. I was wrong. I'm sorry. I don't know. And I need help. So where did those come from and how many. I want to take encouragement and optimism from. How many bosses and managers have told you specifically that. That they hire employees and say that?
- [21:53]
Louise Penny
Do you know? I will tell you, and I will be honest about this two things. I'm very impressed that you remembered all four, because I end up on stage in front of, you know, a couple thousand people, and I only remember three of them. Oh, my God. And it's always something different, a different one that I forget. Do you know, it came about because I'm a recovering alcoholic, and I was at an AA meeting, and my husband, who was also a member, he's now passed away, was chairing the meeting. And there is a normal format for starting a meeting, and they all start with essentially the same way. And there's a comfort in that because it becomes ritualistic. But Michael decided to start in a different way. And he looked at everybody, and he just said the four statements that led to wisdom. Now, we weren't dating at the time. I was about nine months sober. And I just looked at this man. He just said them, paused, didn't explain why he said it or anything, and then went on with the meeting. It was the most extraordinary thing. And the place was just electric. And I thought, there's an amazing man. I didn't think I would ever marry him or date him or anything, but we ended up getting married. So that's where it came from. And I've never forgotten, never forgot. Well, I always forget. One, but I never forgot that moment.
- [23:09]
Charlie Gibson
And do you hear from people that. I hope you hear from people that they have adopted these four ways of gaining knowledge in their lives.
- [23:16]
Louise Penny
Yeah. People often will say they do the most wonderful things. I will get things that are embroidered with that. I'll get people who have painted it and people also who talk about. Often ministers or priests will talk about giving a sermon and mentioning those four routes to wisdom. And I love that it was Michael who. And I'm sure Michael got it from somewhere else. I never actually asked him. I know he did not make it up.
- [23:46]
Kate
The first part of our conversation with Louise Penny, as I say, we'll have the second part next week and we're making this a two parter. Number one, because she's a big darn deal in, in mystery writing. And number two, because we had such a delightful conversation and we're going to talk more next week about her sort of general overall approach to writing and also one lovely story that she told us. I thought her husband Michael, who was the love of her life, had dementia, died in 2016 and how she was able to keep writing even though she was a full time caretaker for Michael.
- [24:20]
Charlie Gibson
She is just a. She is a beautiful writer and you do want to stick. And also too, the other reason that we wanted to do a two parter was because we really did hear from a lot of you that you were big Louise Petty fans. And now we are too, as a matter of fact.
- [24:34]
Kate
Well, now you keep saying. But you're such a newcomer to them. Louise. I read her, I think back, actually, when she first started.
- [24:42]
Charlie Gibson
He listened to the band before. It was cool.
- [24:45]
Kate
I did. The first one was Still Life and I remember somebody recommended it to me and I read it. I think almost contemporaneous to when it came out. Now, have I been able to keep up with one every year? Every year as she turns them out? No, but I have read much of Louise Penny and I'm not a newcomer to the game, Kate.
- [25:05]
Charlie Gibson
No, but when it's all said and done, who's read them all?
- [25:08]
Kate
Yeah, well, all right, braggart.
- [25:11]
Charlie Gibson
But I must say, you know, I'm looking forward to 20. I mean, my gosh, you know, I can't believe I remember this, but there's a great wrap up of novel 19, the Gray Wolf. There is a cliffhanger and the last sentence of the book is, we have a problem. So I'm really looking forward to 22 and man, can she write a good mystery. And I'm looking forward to it. And I hope you'll stick with us because the conversation next week is equally fascinating.
- [25:34]
Kate
So we'll bring you up to date. You know, it sounds like the line from Apollo 13 Houston, we have a problem.
- [25:39]
Charlie Gibson
Yeah, exactly.
- [25:40]
Kate
Marie Pines, we have a problem. Anyway, so we'll end reminding you of the folks who make this podcast possible.
- [25:47]
Charlie Gibson
The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson is a production of ABC Audio and Good Morning America. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Our executive producers are Laura Mayer and Simone Swink. We want to make mention of Taylor Rhodes, Amanda McMaster and Sarah Russell at Good Morning America and Josh Cohen, Asal Asana Poor Meg Fierro and Amira Williams at ABC Audio.