Louise Penny (Toronto, 1958) is the award-winning author of eleven mystery novels, beginning with Still Life (2005).The eleventh, The Nature of the Beast, is due out in August. All the novels take place primarily in the village of Three Pines. Three Pines is in the forest south of Montreal, so tiny that it doesn’t appear on any maps. It is a quiet village without satellite TV or cell phone service, seemingly “off the grid,” a safe haven from the vagaries and nuisances of the contemporary world. But murder happens even here, and Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec comes to investigate.
The village setting and its cast of eccentric characters—the bitter poet with sharp tongue and heart of gold, the gay couple who run a bistro and the town bed and breakfast; the African American former counselor who owns the book store, the artist with a husband jealous of her success—recall the “cozy” British tradition of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers. Yes, but the Gamache novels are profoundly psychological as well. Gamache is a man of honor, a kind man who sees deep into the soul of those around him. He is not foolishly kind, but rather cannily so. He reads people well, and it is that skill that helps him solve murders while earning the respect—or fear—of his colleagues. Each novel presents a murder to solve, but the series contains a story arc that comes to a conclusion in the ninth novel, in which Gamache solves the crime, saves his friends, and vanquishes his enemies.
About the presenterLinda Ledford-Miller
Linda Ledford-Miller has degrees in Luso-Brazilian literature and Comparative Literature from the University of Texas, Austin, specializing in Literature of the Americas. She has published widely on travel writing and women writers. An avid reader of mysteries, she has shifted focus to crime fiction, recently publishing on the American J.D. Robb and the Canadian Louise Penny.