Blog
Louise Penny #1 New York Times Bestseller
by Dan
Fiction + Mysteries and Thrillers / September 06, 2013
I may have told you this before, but I first met Louise Penny in an elevator. It was in a hotel during the author's festival, and she graciously held the door for me as I was rushing to meet one of Raincoast's authors.
It was, I'm sure, my first year here and she didn't know me from Adam. It didn't stop her, however, from introducing herself and her husband Michael, and chattingly merrily all the way down to the lobby.
That chance meeting proved fortuitous the following year when I needed an endorsement for a book Raincoast was publishing. The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale was the true story of a Victorian murder investigation, and even though I'd only met her the once, Louise seemed a perfect reader. Politely pretending to remember who I was, she kindly obliged and blurbed the hell out of it.
It felt like strange serendipity then, when I found out a couple of years ago that Raincoast was going to be Louise's Canadian distributor, and I was going to be assigned to her and the seventh Chief Inspector Gamache novel A Trick of the Light.
We all felt a certain weight of responsibility when the book came out I'm sure—we all wanted it to do so well for Louise who had been so patient for success—but I think I felt it particularly keenly. I was pretty sure I owed her.
Fortunately the book was a great success, although it was a nail-biting few weeks. And the next book, The Beautiful Mystery, did even better.
Now, two years later, I'm no longer Louise's publicist but it still fills me great pleasure to see her new book, How the Light Gets In, debut at #1 this week on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction bestseller list and #1 on the Bookmanager Hardcover Fiction list. With a sell-out event at the Toronto Public Library on September 17th, I couldn't be happier for her. And only MaddAddam has kept Louise off the #1 spot on Globe and Mail Fiction list this week, and I can't begrudge Margaret Atwood that too much—she used buy books from my store, and kindly tell me what to read. I don't suppose she remembers though...
