This is Play It Forward. Real people. Real stories. The struggle to Play It Forward. Episode 295 with television, movie and voiceover actor Robert Bathurst.

You’re a coward. Time and again, as the New Year approaches, that charge is leveled against Armand Gamache. It starts innocently enough. While the residents of the Québec village of Three Pines take advantage of the deep snow to ski and toboggan, the Chief Inspector finds his holiday with his family interrupted by a simple request. He’s asked to provide security for a visiting Professor of Statistics at the nearby university. While he is perplexed until Gamache starts looking into Professor Abigail Robinson and discovers an agenda so repulsive he begs the university to cancel the lecture.


They refuse, citing academic freedom, and accuse Gamache of censorship and intellectual cowardice. Before long, Professor Robinson’s views start seeping into conversations. Spreading and infecting. When a murder is committed it falls to Armand Gamache, to investigate the crime as well as this extraordinary popular delusion.



Once again Louise Perry has placed her character Inspector Ganache in a moral quandary. This timely novel will delight fans of the Canadian mystery novelist with 17 bestselling books.



Narrated by noted actor, Robert Bathurst, best known in the U.S. for his role as Sir Anthony Strallan in Downton Abbey, the THE MADNESS OF CROWDS Audiobook, features Bathurst’s beautifully nuanced performance. Winner of the 2020 Audie Award (audiobooks awards) for Best Male Narrator, Bathurst has been lending his inimitable style to seven Louise Penny novels in the Inspector Gamache Series.