Part 1: Penny Dropped
Louise Penny is a wildly popular Canadian mystery author whose books sell very well at Shelf Life, so I figured I ought to check out her Inspector Ganache. Found a talking book of Glass Houses at the library and listened to it in the car on a road trip.
Friends, it has been a while since I yelled at the radio, but I was yelling at mine when a crucial plot device, the cobrador, which had already been explained by cop A to cop B, was then explained AGAIN by Cop B to Cop C back at the station. Give me a break, Louise, I yelled. I really was paying attention the first time. It’s insulting, dammit.
Sure okay fine, Penny has created a nice little fictional village with some intriguing characters and a hero duly complex and conflicted. But more than once during my listen, I yelled at the radio, at the smooth professional narrator, and at the author: “why are you telling me this AGAIN? Do you think I’m stupid?”.
What finished me off was the way the story ended. The whole thing resolves in a big shoot out in the last chapter, and all the action hinges on a newly introduced character who shows up at the bistro. On page 352 (of 400), the author introduces this key figure for the first time as “The young American” and thereafter as “the head of the American cartel”. Really? Does she not trust us to hold in our minds one more name, one more Pedro or Pete? So how am I to take this deadly hunt and shoot out seriously when audiobook’s very smooth and confiding narrator is reduced to saying “Theheadoftheamericancartel ducked behind a tree and cocked his luger” and “theheadoftheamericancartel lay in a bloody heap on the ground”?
How am I to respect an author who doesn’t respect me enough to believe that I am capable of remembering key plot points and character’s names and identities? I ask you. “Theheadoftheamericancartel” indeed. Harrumph.
And furthermore, I really object to the way word “cartel” appears to me very lazy shorthand for Bad Guys.
I know a lot of people really enjoy Louise Penny, and power to ‘em, but nope, not for me.
