Armand Gamache is Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Quebec and acknowledged as a fine policeman. As this book opens however he is on leave, recovering from the physical and emotional scars left by events that we don’t know the details of until well into the book. He has gone to Quebec City to stay with his former boss and to conduct some historical research. This activity leads him to become involved in an investigation into a local murder. Although not yet ready to return to work in an official capacity his involvement in this interesting case does provide him some respite from reflecting on the terrible events that have led to his being on leave. At the same time he has become concerned that the resolution to his last case, depicted in The Brutal Telling, might have been incorrect so he asks his colleague Jean Guy Beauvoir, also on leave and recovering from injuries he sustained in the same events that still affect Gamache, to return to Three Pines and see if he can spot something the investigative team missed.

Louise Penny is a consistently good teller of stories but she has outdone herself here, juggling three quite distinct stories without a thread dropped or a wobble made. The re-investigation into the last Three Pines murder is probably the simplest of the stories told and stems from everyone’s belief that the man who went to prison for that murder wouldn’t have behaved as stupidly as it appears he did. Jean Guy is told to approach the re-opened investigation with the assumption that the man is innocent and see what else he can find out on that basis. Unlike Gamache Jean Guy has not been a big fan of the odd little village and its quirky inhabitants but it seems to offer just what he needs for his recovery.

In Quebec City Gamache is doing some research at the Literary and Historical Society library. This peculiar institution is home to all the books and personal papers which capture the history of Quebec’s tiny English-speaking community. The building, the collection it houses and the people who look after it have all seen better days. When Augustin Renaud, an eccentric character who has spent his life searching for the burial site of Quebec’s founder, Samuel de Champlain, is found in the sub-basement of the building Gamache is asked to become involved in the investigation by the elderly librarian. She thinks he will be more sympathetic to the English than other French people. I must admit to finding this story particularly engaging, involving many interesting historical tidbits and a thoughtful depiction of the separatist movement (as well as much walking around the historical city by Gamache and his adorable sounding dog Henri). Fittingly this is a case that is solved mostly by old-fashioned policing.

The final story is the recounting of the events that have led to Gamache and Jean Guy being on leave. Penny has for the most part resisted the temptation to indulge in too much sentimentality here, which for me makes it all the more compelling. Told mostly via Gamache’s remembered conversations with another of his colleagues, with occasional input from Jean Guy, this thread is a contrast to the case unfolding in Quebec City, involving very modern problems and the latest policing techniques.

For me this series has not, in the past, quite reached the ‘must read’ list primarily because I found its hero a bit too perfect and its fictional setting a bit too quirky. Here though we spend less time in quirky Three Pines and Gamache’s perfection is a little tarnished (if only in his own eyes) which made the book a much more credible and satisfying read than its predecessor. The intertwining stories had me hooked from beginning to end and I adored Adam Sims’ narration, complete with mild French accents where appropriate (le puff, le pant as my favourite cartoon character would say).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Bury Your Dead has been reviewed at Mysteries in Paradise

There has been talk of late in the book blogosphere about visiting in real life locations that appear in books and I couldn’t help but smile when Armand Gamache talks in Bury Your Dead about walking through the old part of Quebec City and coming across ‘Canada’s most photographed building’. I went to Canada as part of my first overseas trip as a 20-year old (approximately 100 years ago) and, yes, I took a photo of it too (I certainly couldn’t afford to stay there). The building is now the Chateau Frontenac Hotel and has always been a luxury hotel since its opening in 1893.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 4/5
Author website
http://www.louisepenny.com/

Publisher ISIS Audio Books [2010]
ISBN 9781445008967
Length 12 hours 15 minutes
Format Audio CD
Book Series #6 in the Armand Gamache/Three Pines series
Source I borrowed it from the library

Title: Dead Cold (a.k.a A Fatal Grace in the US)

Author: Louise Penny

Publisher: Headline [2006]

ISBN: 978-0-7553-2893-2

In a small village about an hour and a half’s drive east of Montreal a woman who is universally despised is murdered while watching a curling match. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his colleagues from the Surete du Quebec descend on the village to determine who, among the many with strong motive, committed the crime.

Dead Cold is the second book in a series featuring Armand Gamache. I knew very early on in my reading that it wasn’t the first book in the series because every three or four pages cryptic (and some not -so-cryptic) references are made to the events which clearly took place in a previous book. It should have come with a giant warning sticker that said do not read this until you have read Still Life. There were endless mentions of the fallout on Gamache from the previous case and a whole thread about one of the agents on Gamache’s team who had done something awful in the previous case but none of that made sense to me. I know there are no hard and fast rules about how authors of series should treat prior material but, in my opinion, the constant referrals in Dead Cold to prior events damaged the narrative of this story. I am quite sure that if I’d read the first book my experience of this one would have been entirely different and I don’t think that should ever be the case.

I’ll admit I not only struggled to put aside my annoyance at that but there were parts of the story that made little sense to me so I doubt the rest of my judgement is completely objective. However, I shall proceed. I wanted to like the book as it’s set in one of my favourite parts of the world (Quebec province of Canada) and I did find the setting quite lovely. The mixture of French and English language and culture seemed very natural and much as I remembered it and the depiction of life in a small, close-knit community was perfectly charming. I grew up in a country where it snows for a couple of months a year on the very top of a few large hills so my concept of winter was never particularly strong until I spent the season in Canada one year and Penny has also captured what I will always think of as real winter to perfection.

Armand Gamache is in the tradition of Hercule Poirot and Inspector Morse: a genius in his field with almost supernatural abilities to solve crimes by the powers of his deductive reasoning. Unlike those predecessors he’s less arrogant about it, seems far more likable and has better relationships with those around him. I didn’t find him particularly realistic, perhaps uncharitably I never do believe that kind of character, but I did enjoy watching the puzzle unfold through his eyes. The rest of his team weren’t very memorable, they were too fawning in their adoration of Gamache for that, but some of the villagers (potential suspects all) were well created and interesting characters.

I’m not sure I can go back and start with the first book (as I know so much of the outcome now) but if you’re in the market for a solidly written traditional mystery you could do far worse than Louise Penny although I would strongly recommend you read Still Life before this book.

My rating 2.5/5 (heavily influenced by the ‘seepage factor’ from the previous book)