Armand Gamache - a new (to me) detective series

During the last week, I've been reading novels in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, written by Louise Penny. As opposed to the detective novels that I normally read (set in Britain), this series is set in a village ('Three Pines') in the Quebecois hinterland of Canada, and so the landscape is normally one of snow and very low temperatures.

I've only read one complete novel (the first, "Still life") but I've nearly finished the second ("A fatal grace"). I haven't been too impressed with the technical side of the investigations - whilst there are fingerprints, there are no DNA analyses that seem to make modern investigations so much easier. Instead the eponymous detective listens to crime scenes, and there seems to be a great deal of philosophy bandied about. The resolutions seem to be somewhat evidence-free and I wonder how court cases would be built from these investigations.

There is also a sense of humour present, of the sort that speaks to me. For example, in chapter 17 of "A fatal grace", the following exchange appears: ‘Let every man shovel out his own snow, and the whole city will be passable,’ said Gamache. Seeing Beauvoir’s puzzled expression he added, ‘Emerson.’ ‘Lake and Palmer?’ ‘Ralph and Waldo.’ ... Emerson, Ralph and Waldo? What was that? thought Beauvoir. Some obscure hippy group from the ’60s probably. The lyrics didn’t even make sense. While Beauvoir hummed ‘Lucky Man,’ Gamache downloaded his messages....

I actually know who R.W. Emerson was, as the famous "Nightfall" story by Isaac Asimov begins with a quote from Emerson. "A fatal grace" also has some quotes from Leonard Cohen, son of Montreal.

In a later book that I read partially (I decided that it would be better to read them in order), there is a great deal of reference to monkeys. One character briefly mentions being a daydream believer, someone else mentions Davy Jones, and further on, Peter Tork is referenced. I wonder whether the modern audience understands these jokes. Authoress Penny is a few years younger than me, so at least we have the same vintage.

If I'm mentioning that 'it would be better to read the books in order', then I have to mention the Kobo. This managed at one stage to display the series metadata of the books (e.g. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, book 2), but I've not been able to restore this display. The metadata definitely appears in Calibre. 

After playing around a little, I've figured out how to get this text displayed: first of all, I have to have Calibre open when the Kobo is connected to the computer, so that Calibre can 'see' the Kobo. This will cause a new 'Devices' option to appear, allowing Calibre to synchronise with the Kobo. There's an option "update metadata" (or something similar) - clicking on this causes the Kobo to add books to collections and to display the series metadata. This means that I might have to keep books for longer in the Calibre library.

This metadata continues to appear, even if I change the 'sort' setting, but then the books won't be displayed in 'series' order. At the moment, sorting by series seems to be best; I can see which books I have read (or not) by the finished/86% read/unread indicator.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
111	01/12/2007	Sleep	Apnea, Anaemia
654	01/12/2013	Critical week	DBA
779	01/12/2014	My army service - part one	Israel, Personal
1361	01/12/2020	E-hour minus 4	DBA
1362	01/12/2020	Viva result	DBA
1444	01/12/2021	My body is like a barometer	Weather
1558	01/12/2022	Christine McVie, RIP	Obituary, Fleetwood Mac
1691	01/12/2023	Restringing the Stagg - again	Guitars