“Four days. And she had two gay sons, a large black mother, a demented poet for a friend and was considering getting a duck.” (Citation page 10)

Content

December in Three Pines, a small, hidden village in Québec, means lots of snow and Christmas preparations. Seventy-seven years old Constance Pineault comes for a visit and stays at Myrna’s, who invites her to come back and stay over Christmas. But Constance does not arrive and does not answer her phone at home and Myrna calls an old friend, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, homicide department Sûreté du Québec. When Gamache finds out the real identity of Constance, he starts to investigate. For him this comes very convenient, as he at the same time secretly is conducting internal investigations and digging deeper and deeper into old, powerful connections, who are prepared to whatever it takes to stop him.

Theme and Genre

This Canadian crime fiction novel is book nine of the Chief Inspector Gamache Mystery series.

Characters

Three Pines is a special place and community and its inhabitants are loveable. Who would not like Ruth Zardo, the hard, edgy, old poet and her duck Rosa? Chief Inspector Armand Gamache looks more like a professor than a cop and is a brilliant investigator and a deeply caring person. When other investigators look for clues to the killer, he looks for clues to the life of the victim.

Plot and Writing

This novel is everything, a story about love, family and friendship, about life in a rural village, but also about crime, murder and deadly danger. Louise Penny perfectly knows how to write a gripping and thrilling plot with many twists, but also colorful descriptions of the beautiful surroundings in December and at the same time look at human behavior with empathy and humanity. Funny dialogs such as “‘Are you telling me the elite of the Sûreté followed Santa Claus through downtown Montréal?‘ ‘Not Santa. It was Snow White.’” (citation page 508), make you laugh out loud while breathless reading through the absorbing story full of intrigue.

Conclusion

A gripping, wonderful, perfect page-turner. For me this was the first book of the series, but I will definitely follow Armand Gamache to his next cases and also go back for some of the older cases.