This is the 3rd Inspector Armand Gamache book I have read this year and so far my favorite of the series!
Inspector Gamache is called in to the small village of Three Pines once again to investigate a suspicious death. The victim appears to have been scared to death in a house that is not necessarily "haunted" but has proved to bring a lot of trouble to the little village in the past. While Gamache investigates this mystery he is faced with the metaphorical ghost of a case from long ago that threatens to take Gamache and everyone he loves down.
The pleasure of reading each new book in this series grows as the story continues. There is something surprisingly comforting about returning to the same little village with the same beautiful townspeople. Penny's knack for creating a vulnerable and complex community of diverse characters builds book after book. I know these people, I would recognize them anywhere! I know who makes the best croissants. I know why the village drunk is so bitter. I know why the bookstore owner remains alone. I am not a part of the community, but the author's invitation is always extended. The richness of this series is not in the mystery, but in the found family of Three Pines.
My very favorite thing about Louise Penny's writing, is the delicate way she handles the perpetrators in her stories. She has created the most empathetic detective and because of that Gamache is able to approach the crime from this place of vulnerable humility and self awareness. With every solve Gamache speaks to the murderer as if the humanity within himself recognizes the humanity in the antagonist. Anyone can write a binge-worthy thriller with an emotionless psychopath, but it takes a real author to write a murderer that forces us to hold a mirror up to our own unchecked character flaws and emotions.
"He listened to people, took notes, gathered evidence, like all his colleagues. But he did one more thing. He gathered feelings. murder was deeply human. It wasn’t about what people did. No, it was about how they felt, because that’s where it all started. Some feeling that had once been human and natural had twisted. Become grotesque. Had turned sour and corrosive until its very container had been eaten away. Until the human barely existed. It took years for an emotion to reach that stage. Years of careful nurturing, protecting, justifying, tending and finally burying it. Alive. Then one day it clawed its way out, something terrible. Something that had only one goal. To take a life. Armand Gamache found murderers by following the trail of rancid emotions."
5/5 Stars
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