There aren’t many authors who can draw a crowd of almost 2,000 people.
Canadian author Louise Penny is one of them.
This fall, at a live taping of Bookends with Mattea Roach at Massey Hall in Toronto, the seats were filled with excited fans, beaming and laughing along with the conversation.
The energy was warm and friendly, a testament to Penny and the community she’s created around her books. It’s a dedicated one that posts in busy Facebook groups, attends live events and even travels on literary pilgrimages to the Eastern Townships in Quebec to see the spots that inspired her work.
It’s also a group that’s been 20 years in the making.
Penny is the bestselling author of the Inspector Gamache series. The books follow the charming and kind Armand Gamache, head of the homicide department of the Sûreté du Québec, and his investigations in and around the fictional town of Three Pines. (For the most part — a few of the novels are set elsewhere).
Penny published her first novel, Still Life, in 2005, at 46 years old, after an 18-year career as journalist at CBC.
“It was kind of a natural progression to go from CBC to murder,” joked Penny onstage.
Her late husband, the inspiration for Gamache, motivated her to take the leap and pursue her dream of becoming an author, which she’d held since she was eight years old. After five years of writer’s block, she finally did.
For Penny, the dream wasn’t only about publishing the book. It was about the community she could foster around it.
She remembers calling her publisher a few weeks before Still Life was published, asking when her book tour would start.
“They said, ‘well, we’re not going to send you on tour because nobody knows who you are,’” said Penny.
So, Penny deadpanned, she and her husband used her advance to have lunch at McDonald’s and plan their own tour.
“We went everywhere that anyone would have us, any bookstore that would have us,” she said. “And turns out the publisher was right. Nobody came.”
Twenty years later, things have changed.
That’s a testament to the work Penny has put into fostering community, says Kelley Ragland, Penny’s publisher and editor at Minotaur Books.
A masterclass in bringing people together
“Over the years, Louise has consistently prioritized her fans by giving them generous glimpses — via photos, her written word, and in-person — into her world,” said Ragland in an email to CBC Books.
“Doing this helped create a vast community where fans not only learn more about her and keep up with her work and life, but meet one another, connect, and stay connected.”
But Ragland says what strikes her the most about Penny and her fanbase is how genuine the community is.
“It’s a community inspired by love for the Gamache novels — the books are certainly the centre of it — but then it was nurtured and deepened by the connections that Louise made through her own efforts, touring, doing events in the U.S. and Canada, meeting readers face to face, and then also building a social media presence that was intent on real connection,” said Ragland.
“Louise has always addressed her fans like they were friends, sharing pieces of her life, asking them to share about theirs.”
Patricia Prijatel, a fan of Penny who subscribes to her monthly newsletter, says she’s noticed the author’s focus on her readers.
In the newsletters, Penny writes about her books, of course, “but it’s really about us,” Prijatel told CBC Books in an interview.
Penny will use her newsletters to chime in on conversations fans are having in the many Facebook group book clubs, said Prijatel, some with more than 85,000 members.
A fan’s perspective
Prijatel first came across Penny’s work when her book club read How The Light Gets In.
At first, Prijatel says she was skeptical about reading a murder mystery, but it didn’t take her long to fall in love with Penny’s writing and the world she created.
“I was hooked,” she said. She then went back and read Penny’s entire catalogue. At this point, she’s read most of them twice.
“I’m kind of frankly embarrassed about how much of a fan I am.”
She says what she loves about Penny’s work is her excellent writing skills, how much trust she puts in her readers, and the goodness that radiates from the novels.
“All mysteries are good versus evil — it’s the trope,” she said. “But with Louise, the goodness is palpable.”
In a time where many are searching for community, Penny’s fandom is a soft place to land.
“I love to read and read a book that will emphasize the importance of that community, by a person who I know lives it,” said Prijatel. “I think it’s life-affirming.”
Stepping into the author’s imagination
Some fans, Prijatel included, make the trip to the Eastern Townships to visit the sites that inspired the novel.
Louise Cadieux and Gilles Trudel run Three Pines Tours, a company that organizes full-day excursions to key spots featured in her books, complete with insight offered from Penny herself, who helped curate the tours.
They feature stops from the Saint-Gilbert-entre-les-Loups monastery that sparked the setting for The Beautiful Mystery to the quaint streets of Knowlton, Que., Penny’s hometown and the real-life counter to Three Pines.
Canadian author Louise Penny gives The Current a tour of her Café Three Pines, inspired by the bistro in her bestselling Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series
Fans gather from as far as New Zealand, Australia and South Africa to step into Penny’s literary world and hope to catch a glimpse of her, Cadieux and Trudel said in an interview.
Trudel says they conduct around 1,000 tours each season, and that their main demographic is American women between 50 and 80 years old.
Cadieux and Trudel also say they’ve seen many friendships grow between people who meet on the tours, and bond over their common love of Penny’s writing and appreciation for the close-knit environment she writes about in her books.
“She loves her community and she gives back a lot,” said Cadieux. “I think that’s what attracts people the most.”
In fact, in June 2025, Penny opened Café Three Pines, based on Gabri and Olivier’s bistro in her novels. It’s situated under Knowlton’s local bookstore, Brome Lake Books.
“I want people who walk into it to feel, not only that you’re entering the books, you’re entering the bistro, you’re entering that entire safe harbour and environment, but that you are among friends,” she said. “I see that. I get to go there and I get to have that sense of belonging.”
True to form, she credits her fans for helping her realize this dream.
“It’s the most amazing experience to stand in my imagination, something I created 20 years ago, never thinking that it would be realized because of your generosity and your support of the books over the years.”
And with her latest novel, The Black Wolf, topping the indie bookstore bestsellers list all 15 weeks since it came out this fall, it doesn’t seem like the Penny fandom shows any signs of letting up.
