The Madness of Crowds

The Madness of Crowds (2021) is a mystery by Canadian author Louise Penny. The novel is the 17th installment in the Inspector Gamache mystery series; like the other novels in the series, the action unfolds in the community of Three Pines, a fictional village in Quebec. As Inspector Gamache and his allies work to solve a murder, they encounter themes of cowardice, personal responsibility, and the tension between individual rights and the communal good. 

The guide is based on the 2021 Hodder & Stoughton edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of rape, ableism, mental illness, child abuse, child death, death by suicide, and illness or death.

Plot Summary

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is a high-ranking homicide detective in the province of Quebec, Canada. He lives in the small, close-knit village of Three Pines with his wife, Reine-Marie. Gamache’s second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, is happily married to Gamache’s daughter, Annie. Jean-Guy and Annie have two children together. The novel begins just after Christmas, and the COVID-19 pandemic recently ended. Gamache is enjoying the holiday season with his extended family, and there are many visitors in the village, including a Sudanese human rights activist named Haniya Daoud. Gamache is surprised when he is asked to oversee security at an upcoming lecture at a local university. Colette Roberge, the Chancellor of the university and his longtime friend, made the request. Colette is also close with the researcher delivering the lecture, Abigail Robinson. Abigail is a statistics expert who has known Colette since childhood. She is accompanied by her close friend and assistant, Debbie Schneider.

Gamache is shocked when he realizes that Abigail is becoming famous for publicly advocating for the euthanasia of vulnerable individuals—the elderly, the chronically ill, and children born with disabilities. In the wake of the pandemic, Abigail uses statistical modeling to claim that removing the “weak” members of society would create more resources and security. While many people are horrified by these claims, Abigail is quickly gaining supporters. This tension creates an explosive and potentially dangerous atmosphere at her lectures. When Abigail speaks near Three Pines, a local man named Edouard Tardif shoots at her, but no one is harmed. Even though Edouard is quickly arrested and claims that he only wanted to scare Abigail so that she would reconsider spreading her message, Gamache is concerned that there is more to the story. Abigail may still be in danger.

A few days later, the residents of Three Pines attend a local New Year’s Eve party. Abigail, Debbie, and Colette also attend the party, and Abigail has several confrontations with people who object to her theories about eugenics. Haniya, who has witnessed vulnerable people being tortured and killed, detests Abigail, as does local doctor Vincent Gilbert, who is a humanitarian and advocate for individuals living with disabilities. Shortly after midnight, Debbie is found murdered in the woods nearby. Gamache and his team of detectives believe that whoever killed Debbie was targeting Abigail and killed Debbie by mistake. There were many suspects at the party who might have hoped to protect the individuals targeted by Abigail’s plans for euthanasia.

Gamache uncovers more information about Abigail and Debbie’s childhoods and families. Abigail had a younger sister named Maria, who was severely disabled and seemingly died accidentally as a child; Abigail’s father and mother both died by suicide. The former died when Abigail was a student. He entrusted Abigail to his close friend, Colette, and left behind a cryptic note, implying that he might have deliberately killed Maria. The complex web of relationships leaves Gamache puzzled about a possible connection between these past events and the murderer. Meanwhile, investigations into Vincent Gilbert uncover that decades earlier, when he was a young medical student, he worked for a psychiatric researcher named Ewen Cameron. Cameron conducted cruel experiments on patients without consent. Gamache also finds evidence that Abigail’s mother suffered at the hands of Cameron, and these events contributed to her subsequent death by suicide. Abigail also seems to have known about Vincent Gilbert’s role in these events and may have been planning to blackmail him by threatening to reveal this history.

Upon closer inspection of the note Paul Robinson left before he died, it becomes unclear whether Paul intended to imply that he killed Maria. The letter could instead imply that he forgives Maria’s killer. Gamache considers that Debbie or Abigail may have killed Maria, but he soon hits on a theory that would explain the strange events. Gamache and Beauvoir pursue Vincent Gilbert and Abigail Robinson to Vincent’s isolated cabin. They fear a confrontation between the two could lead to violence. Gamache lays out his theory: Abigail killed her younger sister because she resented the burden of caring for her. Paul Robinson realized what Abigail had done, so he made the death look like an accident. When he died by suicide, he tried to communicate that he knew and forgave Abigail for what she had done. Because the message was so subtle, and because Debbie hadn’t seen the original note for years, she didn’t understand what Abigail had done. However, a few weeks before Debbie’s murder, Debbie finally saw a copy of the note and realized that Abigail killed Maria.

Once Debbie knew her secret, Abigail became obsessively worried that she would be found out. She panicked and killed Debbie on New Year’s Eve. Once Gamache uncovers her guilt, Abigail panics and begins cruelly taunting Beauvoir, who is the father of a child with disabilities. She hopes that Beauvoir will lose his composure and shoot her, but he resists so that Abigail can be arrested. Her arrest ends her efforts to spread her arguments about euthanizing vulnerable members of society.