The alternate title of this book should be “All truth with malice in it”, since it seems to be a refrain for many of the characters.

In A Better Man, Gamache is feeling the effects of his actions in Kingdom of the Blind. He’s accepted a demotion to the post of Chief Inspector, a position he had at the start of the series and one that he now shares with his son-in-law/former second-in-command, Jean-Guy. As Quebec deals with the possibility of catastrophic floods, Gamache, Jean-Guy, and Isabelle find themselves caught up in the murder of a young woman, whose death feels personal to Gamache and Jean-Guy.

I remember reading a comment about Gamache that he seems to turn almost saint-like in the later books, making him a less than ideal figure. In the start of A Better Man, I could understand why this comment was made – Gamache seems almost too calm, too wise to be true. But he does make mistakes in this book and he does get angry, which made me realise that he’s not a saint, he’s a fundamentally good man in a world that’s filled with corruption. Do we need our protagonists to be broken to be interesting and relatable? I think not, because I like that Gamache represents the better side of human nature and that he can influence others to be better as well.

Apart from the characters, what I really liked about this book was the focus on the murder mystery. Looking back at my thoughts on Kingdom of the Blind, I remember not being very happy about how the book balanced the multiple plots. Here, I thought everything was back to form – the main story is about the murder and where appropriate, events from past books and the latest crisis to hit Quebec is brought in. The focus on the mystery kept the tension high and I devoured this book in two sittings.

A Better Man is also the first book where I see social media play a big role in the story. Many of the chapters start off with a tweet (or two) about the characters and Instagram plays a key role in the murder case and in the subplots: the Three Pines story in this book is about Clara’s now-failing career and as you can imagine, the censure from the internet plays a big role in it. I am cautiously optimistic about this development – it makes sense that the opinions of the public can affect our characters in such a key way, but I hope we don’t end up seeing Gamache and other lead characters with their own Twitter/Instagram accounts!

Overall, I loved A Better Man. I’ve been waiting for the shoe to drop on the Gamache series (I’m very sure I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again when I read the next book), but Louise Penny has delivered another great book that has left me excited to continue the series.