The following version of the novel was used to create this study guide: Penny, Louise. The Kingdom of the Blind. Minotaur Books, November 27, 2018. Kindle.

In the novel The Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny, the fourteenth installment in the Chief Inspector Gamache series, a baffling will, a dead benefactor, and a missing stock of deadly drugs keep Armand Gamache busy despite his suspension from the Sûreté. Gamache was named as an executor in the will of Bertha Baumgartner, a will in which she left money and a title she did not have to her children. What started out as a laughable situation turned deadly serious when the oldest of Bertha’s children was discovered dead in the ruins of Bertha’s former home after the structure collapsed. Meanwhile, Gamache followed Amelia, a cadet dismissed from the Sûreté Academy, hoping she would lead him to the stock of drugs that made its way onto the streets after a drug raid he led.

When Anthony “Tony” Baumgartner’s body was found in the remains of his mother’s house, it was first believed he was killed because of his mother’s will. When Beauvoir and his investigators started digging through Tony’s office, they discovered fake financial statements. The statements led them to believe Tony, a wealth investor, was stealing from some of clients. When they were finally able to get access to the information on Tony’s laptop and track his searches, they discovered that Tony had been trying to figure out who was creating the fake statements and where the money was going. Tony’s search led him to his brother, Hugo, also a wealth investor. Hugo had been masquerading as his brother, leading investors to believe that Tony was in charge of their accounts when it was really Hugo. When Tony confronted Hugo about the embezzlement, Hugo hit him in the head, killing him. The collapse of the house was unrelated to Tony’s death. Benedict Pouliot, another executor for Bertha’s will, understood that Bertha wanted the house where her children had grown up demolished so they would move forward with their lives. Benedict went to the house the night Tony was killed to see how difficult it would be to demolish the house. He was trapped in the rubble, along with Tony’s body, when he tested a support beam, a move that caused the house to partially collapse.

Meanwhile, Gamache remained on suspension after a drug raid he orchestrated led to injuries and deaths of officers. The raid also led to the release of a deadly drug, Carfentanil, onto the streets. Gamache knew that the leaders of the Sûreté planned to punish him by not giving him back his job as chief superintendent. He was not as worried about that as he was about finding the drugs before they were sold on the streets. Without anyone else’s knowledge, Gamache employs Amelia Choquet, a cadet in the Sûreté Academy who once lived on the streets as a drug user and prostitute, to help him find the drugs. Gamache arranged for drugs to be found in Amelia’s room. He kicked her out of the academy, but had officers follow her.

Amelia made a good undercover officer because she previously had lived on the streets. She earned the attention and distrust of the man who had the Carfentanil right away because she went about looking for him in such a forceful manner. This unnamed drug supplier has Amelia injected with the drug her first night on the streets as part of his experimentation to determine how much drug was needed for a high. She woke with a tag written on her arm in marker. A few days later, a boy with a similar tag told her he could take her the man who had the drug.

Gamache and other officers follow Amelia to the abandoned factory building where the boy took her. The supplier confronted Amelia, who said she wanted to help him with the distribution. He told Amelia he did not trust her and gave her a lethal dose of the Carfentanil. Amelia survived only because Gamache and Beauvoir were close by to give her the rescue drug and do CPR. Despite his risky behavior in using Amelia as a pawn, Gamache does get the drugs back. He was not reinstated as chief superintendent, but he was offered back his old job as head of homicide.