By Paul Carrier
Canadian author Louise Penny routinely reminds readers of her Chief Inspector Gamache mysteries that the fictional hamlet of Three Pines, Québec, where most of her books have been set, is so inconspicuous it isn’t even on the map.
“It had never been surveyed. Never plotted. No GPS or sat nav system, no matter how sophisticated, would ever find the little village,” Penny writes in her latest book, A Trick of the Light. “It only appeared as though by accident over the edge of the hill. Suddenly.”
No, Three Pines is not very easy to locate. Unless you’re a killer.
Murder returns to Three Pines yet again in A Trick of the Light, the seventh book in the Gamache series. The day after struggling local artist Clara Morrow finally makes it big with a successful solo show at a prestigious museum in Montréal, Lillian Dyson, an estranged friend whom Morrow has not seen for decades, turns up dead, with a broken neck.
That’s bad enough, but for Morrow, it’s even worse. The victim is found in Morrow’s garden.
Enter Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police force in the predominantly French-speaking province. Gamache already knows Three Pines and its colorful inhabitants well, having investigated several previous murders there.
Thoughtful and courtly, the bilingual Gamache remains, as in the earlier novels, the antithesis of the hard-boiled cop. If a stranger visited the Montréal home Gamache shares with his wife, Reine-Marie, we are told, “he might think Monsieur Gamache a quiet academic.” But fans of the series know that any suspect who underestimates Gamache does so at his peril.
This being a Louise Penny novel, there’s more going on here than solving a murder. Penny is a gifted writer, and an insightful student of psychology. Personal crises are key elements in this sophisticated mystery.
Gamache’s second in command, Jean Guy Beauvoir, has separated from his wife, harbors a secret love for Gamache’s married daughter and may be addicted to the painkillers he has been taking since he was injured in a police raid gone bad. The hand-in-glove relationship between Beauvoir and Gamache is fraying at the edges. And Clara Morrow’s long marriage to fellow artist Peter Morrow is on the rocks because she realizes that he resents her success, which has eclipsed his own.
The interplay among the idiosyncratic locals in Three Pines always allows Penny to display her keen sense of humor through the witty banter of her characters, and A Trick of the Light is no exception. With this latest murder, some of the residents have begun joking about the high crime rate in their village. Three Pines may be a shelter for misfits, one recurring character quips, but obviously it is not a no-kill shelter.
That’s bad enough, but for Morrow, it’s even worse. The victim is found in Morrow’s garden.
Enter Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec, the provincial police force in the predominantly French-speaking province. Gamache already knows Three Pines and its colorful inhabitants well, having investigated several previous murders there.
Thoughtful and courtly, the bilingual Gamache remains, as in the earlier novels, the antithesis of the hard-boiled cop. If a stranger visited the Montréal home Gamache shares with his wife, Reine-Marie, we are told, “he might think Monsieur Gamache a quiet academic.” But fans of the series know that any suspect who underestimates Gamache does so at his peril.
This being a Louise Penny novel, there’s more going on here than solving a murder. Penny is a gifted writer, and an insightful student of psychology. Personal crises are key elements in this sophisticated mystery.
Gamache’s second in command, Jean Guy Beauvoir, has separated from his wife, harbors a secret love for Gamache’s married daughter and may be addicted to the painkillers he has been taking since he was injured in a police raid gone bad. The hand-in-glove relationship between Beauvoir and Gamache is fraying at the edges. And Clara Morrow’s long marriage to fellow artist Peter Morrow is on the rocks because she realizes that he resents her success, which has eclipsed his own.
The interplay among the idiosyncratic locals in Three Pines always allows Penny to display her keen sense of humor through the witty banter of her characters, and A Trick of the Light is no exception. With this latest murder, some of the residents have begun joking about the high crime rate in their village. Three Pines may be a shelter for misfits, one recurring character quips, but obviously it is not a no-kill shelter.
Penny is mixing things up a bit, though. The previous novel in the series, Bury Your Dead, was set in Québec City. And in a recent interview, the author told the Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper, that the venues will continue to alternate between Three Pines and other locales as the series progresses. “Every second book will be set somewhere else, mostly in Québec,” Penny said. “The next one is in a remote monastery, with a vocation for Gregorian chants. Then it's back to Three Pines.”
Although Three Pines is Penny’s creation, the province of Québec, obviously, is not. Penny helps anchor her novels in that province by dropping French words and phrases into the conversations of her characters - a reminder that they would be speaking French in real life. In the end, of course, solving the murder is at the heart of any good mystery. So it is here. Penny keeps us guessing, tossing out a couple of false leads to throw the reader off until all is revealed in the final pages.
