I cancelled my Audible subscription some months back when I discovered that my subscription plan wouldn’t allow me to download files and listen off line. So for entertainment/distraction while in the gym I’ve had to rely on the audiobook options available via my local library service.

They’e not wonderful — the selection is very heavily weighted towards thrillers, crime and popular authors like Lucinda Riley. For anything decent you have to join a very long reservations queue. These three were the best options available at the time.

The Maid by Nita Prose

In Nita Prose’s debut novel, a naive maid in a high class hotel solves the mystery about a wealthy guest found dead in his suite.

Molly Gray is a model employee at the Regency Grand. Every day, armed with a fully stocked cart of miniature soaps and bottles, she delights in returning guest rooms “to a state of perfection.” Order and routine help her make sense of the world.

Her carefully managed life is thrown into chaos the day she finds the fabulously wealthy guest Charles Black, dead in his bed and she becomes the lead suspect.

The plot is far fetched — there’s no hard evidence to implicate her, just hints from other hotel workers and Molly’s strange responses when questioned by police.

Molly’s old-fashioned turns of phrase and tendency to answer with precision, may indicate neurodiversity. I’m not qualified to guage that but I would have thought a police officer with an ounce of intelligence would have considered that possibility.

The Maid isn’t a book I would have read normally but it served the purpose of distracting me from the time remaining clock on the treadmill.

The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny

This is the 19th novel in Louise Penny’s bestselling series featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec. The series has become increasingly wide ranging it its themes and locations with each new title.

In The Grey Wolf the plot is focused on a bio-toxin terrorist threat to the water supply of Montreal. It begins — and ends — in the familiar cosy territory of the Three Pines village but travels far and wide in between. As Gamache and his trusted deputies race to prevent the attack, they take in  Québec, Washington, The Vatican and a secluded monastery in France.

As always with Penny’s novels, the plot is complex, weaving together seemingly disparate pieces of info that lead readers down many dead ends. A missing coat and a possible intruder in Gamache’s apartment, somehow link to the ingredients for Chartreuse liqueur and political ambition.

There was a touch too much of the thriller element for me as the novel drew to its close. I’ve always found the enjoyment of the series lies in the character of Armand Gamache. He’s a less showy detective than most you encounter in crime fiction, a man confident in his abilities but also conscious of his failings. In The Grey Wolf he’s turned into an action man hero which seems so much at odds with the thoughtful, wise man man of the previous books.

The Black Wolf by Louise Penny

Alert – skip to the last paragraph if you want to avoid any spoilers

The Grey Wolf ended with the arrest of the person behind a threat to poison the public water system of Montreal. It should have been a time for celebration but weeks after the arrest, Gamache begins to doubt whether the man they called The Black Wolf, the man now in prison, really was the mastermind. Is there indeed an even greater threat lurking?

Once more his team swing into action. This time, their inquiries lead them take them to the pinnacles of power in law enforcement, industry, organized crime and government. It’s not just the future of one city at stake, nor just one country.

So having seen Gamache as the saviour of Montreal in The Grey Wolf, now in The Black Wolf he’s the saviour of his country if not the world. Ridiculous.

I have four books still to read from the earlier part of the series. I may still keep them for those days when I want something undemanding but otherwise I’m done with this series.