Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Still Life / Louise Penny / 473 pages / 8 cds

     I have a confession to make. I am in love with Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Montreal police. He is a man not given to publicity seeking actions but is a quiet man with deep understanding of the human psyche. Armand is older, hair beginning to gray but with the biggest brown eyes that can see through someone's false story. Inspector Gamache is summoned to a tiny village of Three Pines just north of the U.S. border. There has been a murder. He summons his team and as they arrive we meet them one by one. There are four primary detectives: Detective Beauvoir & Agent Lacoste and a new member Yvette Nicole, As they begin their investigation, the reader begins to sense there is a deep undercurrent to everyone's actions.
     A beloved member of the community has been found murdered in the woods. She had been to a dinner party the night before so those 5-6 people are the last to see her alive. How the investigation begins and the directions it takes are like a police procedural but you have the human side of the detectives interfere. Beauvoir takes a dislike to an older woman and those feelings collide with the need to be impartial. Nicole seems to be a thorn in the side of everyone and constantly bungles instructions but is there a purpose to it? Gamache's past comes calling and those decisions begin to taint the investigation in Three Pines. A wonderfully complex debut mystery. I am looking forward to seeing where the rest of the series takes me.
     Louise Penny's novels have been called cozy mysteries and I agree with that descriptions but there is so much more. We learn about Quebecois history, the city politics of Montreal and their police, the history of Three Pines and what is means to the people who live there. The village isn't on any map and the residents had fled the big city in the hopes of starting all over again. We learn about the art world through two rather intriguing characters who I think will be part of a overlying story arc in the continuing novels. I certainly came to feel these people were part of our community and I would see them at any time. I would love to live in the village of Three Pines. Heartily recommended to anyone who lives an intriguing mystery, human nature and a well-plotted novel. Bet you don't figure out the murderer before Gamache does!!

Six degrees of reading: The Secret Place (Dublin Murder squad) by Tana French, Vertigo 42 (Richard Jury mystery) by Martha Grimes, Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia MacNeal. 

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