The Madness of Crowds: Violence in the Midst of Controversy

 I've seen The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny called preachy.  I didn't experience it that way.  I thought it was a book with a strong message, but I didn't see the author preaching overtly.  I wonder if those who call it preachy don't think a mystery should have a message  other than the general one that "crime doesn't pay".  

(Though I've seen dark mysteries in which the perpetrators got away with it.   One of the reasons that I find mysteries so satisfying is the expectation that whoever committed the crime will suffer the penalty.  I want to see justice done.  I consider that one of the essential characteristics of mysteries.  I dislike books that break that particular rule of the genre.)

                                      

There is a character who lectures in favor of  the mandatory abortion of fetuses who aren't perfect.  I'd worry that when eugenics starts being a basis for termination, dominant local prejudices could come into play.  In some localities pregnancies could be terminated on the basis of race or immigration status.  She also advocated for the termination of those who are bedridden! How long would they need to be bedridden before they are placed on the termination list?  Would illness become illegal? How far would such a law be taken?

 When a nursing home that was recently abandoned by the staff with the patients left to die is mentioned in the book, I wondered if this had actually happened.  So I ran a search and discovered an example of the owners abandoning the nursing home.  The staff had stayed on even though their paychecks had bounced.   I found the staff's dedication inspiring.  I was glad to discover that new homes had been found for all the patients. So the current situation was transitional.

A character in The Madness of Crowds had a book called How To Lie With Statistics. I was intrigued by the title. I ran a search for the book which does indeed exist.  The author is Darrell Huff.  I placed it on hold because I'd like to know what examples are cited in the book. It could be very illuminating. 

Three Pines, the village in  Quebec where most of the Gamache series take place, has unusual graffitti.  Someone inscribed "Surprised by Joy" on a bench.  The first work with that title that comes up in search is the C. S. Lewis memoir, but C. S. Lewis apparently borrowed the title of a Wordsworth poem which can be found here.   In the poem, the poet imagines seeing a beloved person who is dead.  Since I haven't read the C. S. Lewis memoir, I don't know how the poem may or may not relate to any event in the life of C. S. Lewis.  I was just curious about the source of "Surprised by Joy".

In the Acknowledgements we learn that Penny started writing this novel during Canada's coronavirus quarantine, but she set it after the quarantine was over.  Since there may be any number of variants, we can't know when we will have "normality"( however you want to define that term).  Yet even when this crisis is over, I'm sure there will be other events that will fuel future plots for mysteries.