The Dionne Quintuplets (photo: wikimedia)

By Louise Penny. Narrated by Ralph Cosham. Louise Penny’s Quebec-based Chief Inspector Gamache novels are wildly popular—this one was nominated for several awards, and it’s the second I’ve listened to. The story’s multilayered plot (no spoilers here) is a mix of the intriguing and barely plausible, but Penny’s characters and setting are nicely developed, not the cardboard cutouts that populate many mysteries. Penny’s first novels initially were called “The Three Pines Mysteries,” and this one brings in the remote village of Three Pines and its clutch of eccentrics quite believably.

In this book, ninth in the series, two investigations are under way. One involves the death of the last of the Ouellet (WEE-lay) quintuplets, modeled on Ontario’s exploited Dionne quintuplets from the same pre-fertility drug era. Penny might have been inspired by the photo of the real Dionne quintuplets, above, in devising a theme for her fictional quints of one being always a bit apart, separate, beginning even before birth.

The other, much shakier plot, is political. It suffers from the stakes-raising trend among mystery writers, who have decided an interesting death or two isn’t enough to capture readers’ attention.

Penny has a habit in this book of withholding from the reader. “He made two telephone calls before leaving the office.” Only later will we find out what those calls were. Use this device once or twice, OK, but it occurs so often, it starts to feel manipulative—I hear the author behind the scenes hammering together cliffhangers.

Apparently Ralph Cosham, who narrates the series, is well regarded for bringing Gamache to life, and he did grow on me a little, but generally I find him plodding. The book’s title comes from fellow Canadian Leonard Cohen’s song Anthem: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” I didn’t tumble to the Cohen connection, though I understood the title and the cracks, even without the author’s explanation near the end. Ironically, in a post-story conversation between Penny and Cosham, she talks about the kinds of things that should be left unsaid because “the reader has to do some of the work.” I totally agree, and thought the title, which captured the book’s entire theme, was work I could have done and had done.