The Madness of Crowds

The novel takes place in a compressed time frame, with the action unfolding over the course of a few days in winter. When the novel opens, the quiet lull of the holiday season appears deceptively serene—a time traditionally reserved for rest and reunion between Christmas and New Year’s Day—making the darkness that follows all the more jarring. Gamache’s extended family, including his two adult children, their partners, his grandchildren, and his elderly godfather are all gathered. The holiday is particularly meaningful after the recent pandemic, which kept individuals isolated, increasing the value of peaceful holidays with loved ones. As Jean-Guy reflects, “after the rigors, the horrors, of the pandemic, this Christmas vacation in Three Pines was a welcome respite. A relief” (19).

However, this seemingly peaceful context sets the stage for juxtaposition when the local community begins to fracture due to ideological disagreement and violence. The novel’s title alludes to the danger of ideas being spread among groups: At first, the return of the ability to spend time with others is celebrated. However, when individuals gather, nefarious ideas can also spread. The wintertime setting also enhances the novel’s communal bonding, but the frigid temperatures serve as a metaphor for the danger just beyond these domestic holiday settings. 

Penny utilizes the events of the global COVID-19 pandemic to explore how community is both necessary and dangerous. Because individuals can again gather, individuals like Abigail Robinson are able to cultivate their audiences. The trauma of the pandemic leaves people vulnerable to anyone who promises them safety and security: “[T]hey were battered and bruised from losing relatives, losing friends […] they were tired of being afraid” (15). While there is no immediate threat in the novel, dangerous ideas are depicted as a kind of contagion or illness that spreads via exposure. The context of the pandemic sets the stage for the theme of Individual Rights in Conflict with the Collective Good, since many individuals are tired of constraining individual freedoms to protect the greater good.

The depiction of Abigail Robinson as a demagogue reflects the erosion of public trust and the realization that existing systems didn’t prevent or fully mitigate the effects of the pandemic. Interestingly, Abigail is not portrayed as someone with populist appeal; she is a renowned academic who relies on the meticulous usage of statistics to support her controversial claims. However, Abigail is skilled at presenting her message in accessible and appealing terms; when he watches her speak, Gamache observes that “this lecture on statistics, on mathematics, was also music. And it was dark. Albeit a dark art” (42). Abigail’s rapid rise to notoriety—transitioning from a government researcher to a viral public figure—reveals how easily intellectual authority can be distorted. The early chapters emphasize that her report was never meant for public consumption. Its leakage, and her decision to go public, reflect a shift from private scholarship to political theater. Penny uses this transformation to comment on how dangerous ideas often gain traction through emotional resonance and spectacle.

The lecture hall setting, typically associated with rational discourse and intellectual safety, is instead portrayed as a volatile space where data becomes a weapon. This reversal underscores the novel’s growing tension between logic and morality. Gamache’s metaphor of Abigail’s speech as a form of “music” draws attention to the seductive quality of language: She orchestrates data. This musicality, paired with the ominous “dark art” imagery, reinforces that persuasion can be as dangerous as violence when wielded unethically.

Through Abigail, Penny depicts threats to social order and moral values as arising from within the very institutions that also exist to safeguard that society. Researchers developed the vaccine that brought the pandemic to an end—-but they can also use their knowledge, intelligence, and skill to manipulate others. The dubious morality of individuals like Abigail who claim to value reason, science, and logic also introduces the theme of Bias and Emotion Impacting Decisions, because even those who claim to be objective still have secret motivations.

The novel further complicates the notion of objectivity through the inner conflicts of characters like Jean-Guy, who finds himself emotionally rattled by Robinson’s message, highlighting the Parental Desire to Protect Children. His breakdown reveals that emotion and ideology often intertwine beneath the surface of even the most rational-seeming actions. When he says that part of him wished “someone, a doctor, had told us we had to abort” (132), his vulnerability shocks both himself and Gamache. This admission makes him painfully human. Penny doesn’t condemn him but rather uses his grief to highlight how easily fear and exhaustion can be warped into agreement with extremist views. Gamache is quick to highlight the difference between emotional fatigue and Abigail’s recommendations for euthanasia. This distinction functions within the narrative to demonstrate the difference between natural human emotion and extremism.

The events at Abigail’s lecture occupy most of the novel’s opening chapters, creating dramatic tension and the threat of violence. When shots are fired at Abigail as she speaks, it seems as though this might be the inciting incident that sets the mystery in motion. However, no one is harmed, and the man who fired the gun is apprehended immediately. Penny creates a more complex plot structure by using the initial shooting to foreshadow subsequent violence and function as a kind of red herring.

By introducing a violent act that ultimately goes nowhere, Penny subverts reader expectations and shifts the mystery’s focus inward. The emotional fallout—the fear, guilt, and personal reckonings that follow—become the real catalysts of the plot. This allows Penny to slow the narrative pace and foreground psychological unraveling rather than immediate physical danger.

In this opening section, Penny sets the stage for a slow-burning mystery in which danger emerges not just from a single killer, but from the beliefs people are willing to accept or ignore when afraid. The ideological and emotional fractures laid bare in these early chapters become the fault lines on which the rest of the novel is built.