Ahead of library fundraiser, mystery author Louise Penny discusses newest novel [Q&A]

Louise Penny can still recall the feeling of going to the library as a 6-year-old girl in Toronto.

"It was so exciting," says the award-winning, New York Times bestselling mystery author during a recent interview on Zoom. "We got to choose what books we wanted and take them up and stamp them and then take them home and read them. The whole process was like magic."

The magic is still there for Penny, who says she'll occasionally visit libraries when she's feeling lonely during long book tours and other solo travels.

"If someone blindfolded me, I would know I was in a library," Penny says. "They all smell the same, don't they? Wonderful. Sort of an almost musky books smell."

The atmosphere and smells may remain the same as Penny remembers from childhood, but there's one big difference: The shelves at any given library will most likely be stocked with her New York Times-bestselling series of crime books which take place in the fictional village of Three Pines — among some real locations — and follow the adventures of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.

And, beginning on Oct. 29, library and bookstores shelves will have a new entry in the "Gamache" series. "The Grey Wolf" is the 19th "Gamache" novel in the series, which Penny views as one long epic novel.

Penny will appear Thursday, Oct. 31, at Calvary Church in Lancaster for an afternoon event co-hosted by the Friends of the Public Libraries of Lancaster County and Harrisburg's Midtown Scholar Bookstore. WGAL reporter Anne Shannon will interview Penny during the event. Proceeds from the event will benefit public libraries in Lancaster County.

Fans of Penny's pulse-pounding thrillers won't have to wait in suspense to find out if there will be more entries to the series; the author confirmed she is working on another "Gamache" novel.

Penny has won nine Agatha Awards — named, of course, for the murder mystery master Agatha Christie. Penny's work translated into 31 languages, and she also collaborated with fan-turned-friend Hillary Rodham Clinton on the 2021 political mystery novel "State of Terror."

Penny, who was staying in a London flat with her golden retriever, Muggins, took some time for a Zoom call to talk about her writing process, creating her long-running Chief Inspector Gamache character and the intriguing origin for her newest novel, "The Grey Wolf."

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What were some influential books you discovered at the library?

The "Anne of Green Gables" books were the first ones where I understood what a series was and fell in love with a character and saw a character grow. I loved the ability to just immerse myself in that. I still remember "Charlotte's Web" was sort of the turning point for me. I think that's where my imagination really started. I could see Charlotte. I could feel that book. That's where, like, the fourth wall came down and I understood how powerful storytelling is.

You created the village of Three Pines, which you've said was inspired by small villages in Quebec, for the setting of many of your books. How important is a sense of place in your work?

For me, the setting is a character itself. Three Pines absolutely, but also the broader setting of Quebec, and then beyond that, Canada. I'm very proud to be Canadian, and it's important to me that my books are set there. I want to give people that sense of place. And that wouldn't have happened had my husband and I not moved out of Montreal and into a small village south of Montreal. When people come and visit, I sometimes get a little embarrassed, because I think they realize that I have no imagination. I'm essentially writing what I see out the window every day.

I searched for home for most of my adult life. I lived in different areas of Canada, different cities and had great experiences everywhere, but never really felt at home. I found a home in this tiny Quebec village. For someone who searched for it all her life, to find it is a miracle. I wanted to celebrate that and talk about that. So, the books are obviously crime novels, and proudly so, but the crime is the Trojan Horse that allows me to look at all sorts of other issues and themes that are important. They're also about belonging. They're about friendship, about community. They're about the fact that you can never guarantee physical safety, but you can guarantee emotional safety. And you do that by being connected, by having a community around you. And that's what I found in this village in Quebec. So (the books are) very much a love letter to this place that saved a place at the table for me.

What makes a good recurring character, like Chief Inspector Gamache, in your opinion?

The idea that the character evolves. I think that's very important, not essential, because you see some characters like Poirot or Miss Marple, who really didn't evolve. They were essentially the same in the first book as they were 50 years later. And that's fine. It worked beautifully for Agatha Christie and her millions of fans. But for me, the character needs to evolve and grow and learn. This is book 19 that's coming out now and essentially (all the books are) one book with 19 chapters. There is growth, there's an evolution, there's an echo, there's a consequence that marches through the books. But I think finally, it has to be someone you care about.

And speaking of that, you've said in other interviews that Gamache is based on your late husband, Michael. Does writing a new Gamache book let you have an ongoing connection to your late husband?

It's a real blessing. I thought that I would have to quit writing because it would just be too painful. And actually, the opposite happened. Now I get to visit him and we have conversations. And you know, sometimes I do some brutal things to him. But it's lovely. I write about his relationship with|

Reine-Marie (Gamache's wife), and that's very similar to the one that Michael and I had. So it allows me to reflect on that. Yeah, it is genuinely a blessing and the books have become a real harbor for me.

When you're about to begin a new 'Gamache' book, do you need to figure out the crime first? Or is there something else that invites you into the book?

The starting point (for "The Grey Wolf"), and this sounds ridiculous, I was reading something, an , I believe it might have been out of the New York Times. It was a strange story about the liqueur Chartreuse. I haven't had it. Apparently it's disgusting, but it looks very pretty. It's a nice green color. Chartreuse is made by monks in a Carthusian abbey in the middle of nowhere France, and the recipe is hundreds of years old. But the recipe was only ever held by two monks at any one time. So when one monk is dying, he hands the recipe over to another monk and then dies. There's this whole trail of monks who've known the recipe. I think it's 139 herbs. There are people who have tried to figure it out and they know some of the herbs, but they don't know what quantities or the combinations. Chartreuse was considered a medicine, an elixir, for many years. But it's still true today. Only two monks today know the recipe for chartreuse, and they managed to keep it a secret. Isn't that cool?