The New Louise Penny Novel . . . and the Other New Louise Penny Novel

I’m reading The Last Mandarin (with thanks to NetGalley and the novel’s publisher), a collaboration by two terrific authors: Louise Penny, of course, and Mellissa Fung, a Canadian journalist and former foreign correspondent, and the author of the gripping memoir Under an Afghan Sky.

Fung’s first book describes how, in 2008, she was kidnapped in Afghanistan while reporting on the Canadian military intervention. She was held in a cave for weeks by men who were, perhaps surprisingly, not Taliban but local thugs seeking to make some money. It was an exceptionally tense time, diplomatically, with a federal election looming and the CBC deeply concerned that publicity to the kidnapping would result in their employee’s murder. But she survived, and she was rescued. Fung has written movingly about post-traumatic stress disorder. More recently, Fung made a documentary film, Captive, about the Boko Haram abductions.

Penny’s newsletters and social media regularly mention her family and close friends, which include Fung and her partner. (Fun photo, here, of a Penny-themed cake created by Fung: https://www.instagram.com/p/DRmiT9_CBDi/).

I like this book. It has an intriguing and original premise and it’s written in what has become Penny’s recent trademark style of extensive dialogue and short sentences. I do occasionally miss the more languorous and reflective feel of the earliest novels in the Gamache/Three Pines series, but this is a thriller filled with international intrigue and politics, and those virtues would be out of place.

The Last Mandarin is about a young Chinese American woman, a recent-ish journalism grad and content creator who is developing a food blog. Alice is burdened by her relationship with her far more accomplished mother, whom she calls by her first name, Vivien.

Vivien Li is a fascinating character: a political activist who had to leave China after Tiananmen Square, she is deeply involved in a network of connections to Chinese informants which makes her valuable to the U.S. government.

Vivien and Alice are having a fraught lunch in Washington, D.C. when, all of a sudden, alarms start ringing–literal ones. Everyone in the restaurant and the nearby vicinity is subject to the aural assault of phone, security, and fire alarms going off simultaneously. And it turns out that this is an engineered worldwide phenomenon, almost certainly controlled by China, although they are not taking immediate credit.

A car whisks Vivien and Alice to the White House where the younger woman learns, to her surprise, that she herself may unwittingly hold valuable information.

I’m going to stop there, because the novel’s not due out until May, and in a political thriller the twists and turns are a big part of the fun for readers. But I can tell you that this is an engaging mother-daughter story that globe-trots at a staccato pace. International political thrillers are not my favourite genre, but this is a strong one.

Here’s Penny’s own description: “THE LAST MANDARIN is a study of absolute power and voracious greed, political terror and personal conviction. But it is also an intimate examination of choice, of sacrifice, of memory and myths, both cultural and personal. It is the story of a mother and daughter, as well as a compelling international thriller about the precarious balance of power across the world, and within a family. And what happens when both break down.”

And as to the other Penny novel: her most recent monthly newsletter, on February 1, shared the title of the next Gamache/Three Pines novel: Miss Wolcott’s Ghost. From the website: “It will be set in Three Pines and published on October 27th of this year.” This should cheer readers who felt that there wasn’t nearly enough of the cozy bistro community in the companion Wolf novels.

I love the title. I’m looking forward to this book, and to my ten days in Knowlton in early September. I’m hoping the museum will be open and I’ll be able to spend some time patting golden retrievers and hanging out in the bookstore.

A glimpse of Penny would be lovely, but my general approach is to admire from a distance, as I did with the astonishingly gifted Denise Mina last September in the small Scottish city of Stirling.

Mina has been announced as the successor guest programmer to Sir Ian Rankin, so she’ll be featured in the 2026 Bloody Scotland.

Meanwhile, Shetland Noir approaches, for readers who are more intrepid than I am and who can make their way to the Hebrides: not a quick or easy journey, even from the rest of Scotland.

Gratuitous photo from the shores of Loch Ness, because I’m reading a lovely book, Annie Worsley’s Windswept: Life, Nature, and Deep Time in the Scottish Highlands. It’s just about the opposite of a crime novel, and highly recommended.