The Madness of Crowds: Louise Penny's new novel

Evil, compassion and hot chocolate. There will be butter tarts too.

Hello! Hello!

Michael’s the big fiction reader in our house and a much keener fan of mysteries than I am, but I fell in love with Louise Penny – the person and her books – a couple of years ago and now I find myself dreaming of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache (those eyes, those sweaters, that after-shave, that mind) and the village of Three Pines. I can already hear her millions of fans asking, “What took you so long?”

It took a message from our mutual friend, Ryan Lawson, to bring us together. And it took only an instant for us to start a conversation that hasn’t stopped since. Not that I didn’t have to play some quick catch-up before Louise and her friends turned up on my doorstep in Paris – back then, I’d never read even one of her books. As I wrote about that meeting in my New York Times Magazine column, because I was so deep into her writing that I missed a couple of metro stops and a bus stop, I wasn’t sure whether I’d be angry at Louise when I saw her or if I’d want to hug her. Of…