Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, head of the Quebec Surete, and his colleagues Inspector Jean Guy and Agent Isabelle Lacoste, are called upon to investigate the murder of an elderly man found dead in the bistro of the peaceful and picturesque village of Three Pines in rural Quebec. No-one knows who the dead man is or where he came from or why he was killed or what the murder weapon was, but it later becomes apparent that his body was moved not once but several times. Gamache, benign yet shrewd with a deep knowledge of human nature, pursues his enquiries among the residents of the village: Olivier Brule, owner of the bistro, and his lover/partner Gabriel, Marc and Dominique Gilbert and Marc’s parents Carole and Vincent who have bought and are restoring the local big house, the artists Clara and Peter Morrow, the elderly bad-tempered poet Ruth Zardo who is accompanied everywhere by her pet duck Rosa, the retired psychologist Myrna Landers, the Czech family Roar, Hanna and Havoc Parra. All have something to hide, some may be connected with the old man’s death. Gamache’s investigations take him back in time to Europe’s troubled past and in the present to the mysterious Haida Islands and their Native American inhabitants before he finds the answers he has been seeking.
Louise Penny has won a number of prizes for her previous C.I. Gamache novels, including the Crime Writers Association First Blood Dagger and awards in Canada and the U.S. She has been compared to Minette Walters. This highly literary novel, with its elements of magical realism and numerous excerpts from poems which impart a near-mythological dimension to the narrative, is in the same genre.
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Radmila May
Other titles by Louise Penny: Still Life, Dead Cold, The Cruellest Month, The Murder Stone.