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Product Description
Quill & Quire
When I last reviewed a Louise Penny novel in these pages (2009’s The Brutal Telling), I wondered how much longer she could spin stories of murder in her chosen setting of the cloistered, tight-knit Eastern Townships village of Three Pines, Quebec – how many local killers could be protected, then unmasked? Bury Your Dead is an admirable attempt to expand the author’s storytelling horizons. In the novel, Penny’s delightful, world-weary detective, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, questions every assumption he’s ever made in the process of coming to grips with a “terrible, terrible mistake.”
Several storylines emerge, diverge, then converge. Gamache is supposed to be on holiday with his wife in Quebec City, but gets mixed up in a perplexing and brutal killing in the Literary and Historical Society Library, a library devoted to the history of the city’s English-speaking citizens. As the plot thickens, Gamache begins to suspect that the Three Pines scion he fingered as the murderer in Penny’s previous outing is in fact innocent, and that the real culprit got away with the crime.
Penny’s plot is complicated, and much of Bury Your Dead’s middle section drags because the reader is forced to work too hard to piece everything together. But the action picks up splendidly in the novel’s final pages, as both the community of Three Pines and Gamache himself come to terms with their culpability in convicting an innocent man. Revisiting (and revising) the climax of such a recent novel is an audacious move on Penny’s part, and it works well.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.Review
“Sophisticated and moving—her best yet.” --People Magazine, “People Pick,” 4 stars
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Most helpful customer reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
What more could you want in a great mystery book?,
By
This review is from: Bury Your Dead (Hardcover)
Short review: It's an incredible book and I am very lucky that I had access to an Advanced Reader's Copy. You, gentle reader, would enjoy it most if you read the first five books in the Three Pines mystery series as they all build in terms of character and story to make the experience far more rich and rewarding.And a longer (if you wnat to keep reading) version: My love affair with the books of Louise Penny began two years ago when I read the first of her Three Pines mysteries, "Still Life". I have read a lot of mysteries (including 120 in the last three years) and Louise Penny has become one of my favorite writers. All of the mysteries I read have their fair share of good and evil, usually a corpse or two and someone searching for the answers. In Louise's world, her people are so complex and fascinating (beginning with the Surete's Armand Gamache) that you wish you could move into the small Canadian village of Three Pines and join them for a cup of cafe au lait and a croissant. So what if people seem to die there (of unnatural causes) at a higher per capita rate than almost anywhere else! It's a world of good friends and great food and challenging weather, of art and poetry and greed and mayhem and undercurrents. So many wonderful undercurrents. Penny does not underestimate the readers' intelligence and for that we can be grateful. This newest book, "Bury Your Dead" takes you to several locations throughout Canada, but her skill in tying it all back to Three Pines and the residents there is wonderful. I have no desire to spoil any of the storyline(s) for you, so I will just say that if you like your reading to include sly wit, heartbreaking emotions and a deep understanding of what makes us human, this is the book (and series) for you. Enjoy.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Discover Québec City,
By
This review is from: Bury Your Dead (Paperback)
Ms Penny improves which each new book. Discover this great city while enjoying an entertaining whodunnit! No need to read all the previous books as recurring characters are well described. Some creative liberties with historical facts which the author acknowledges in the introduction. A good read nonetheless.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
bury your dead,
By
This review is from: Bury Your Dead (Paperback)
The book takes place in and around Quebec City, Canada, where the dwindling Anglophone community feels it is still fighting wars 250 years in the past. One which the English had won, 'securing Quebec for the English, on paper,' but not so in actuality. Even beyond the strong separatist feelings, there is a great deal of animosity between the two cultures [Francophones being the other], down to the refusal of most of its citizens to learn the language of the other. As the Quebecois say, 'je me souviens,' I remember. We are told that 'not everything buried is actually dead. For many, the past is alive.'The plot deals with two present-day murders, and the author teases the reader by alternating the chapters between the two investigations ' indeed, three, as there is another involving deeds, and a dead body, from over a century ago. A great deal of fascinating history is provided, regarding events of which I do not hesitate to admit that I [and I suspect many other non-Canadians] was unaware. Inspector Gamache, 'head of the most prestigious homicide unit in Canada, the Surete du Quebec,' returns in his sixth appearance. This time around he is literally and figuratively scarred and haunted by recent events, a deadly incident involving the murder of one Surete officer and the kidnapping of another, pitting Gamache up against his superior officer who refuses to consider a scenario other than the one which he perceives to be the correct one in order to try to rescue their endangered colleague. Now on leave, and haunted by the tragic outcome of the incident, Gamache is told by a trusted mentor that everything will heal, 'avec le temps,' with time. Gamache is described as 'a man who preferred good books and long walks to any other activity.' He also has a strong sense of justice, and feels duty bound to take another look at the case which was at the center of 'The Brutal Telling,' the prior entry in the series, the murder of a hermit in the charming village of Three Pines, despite the fact that the man he had arrested for the murder was convicted and is presently serving his sentence. The pace of the novel is a leisurely one, and although I could not figure out why I found it so slow-moving, I must say it gave me that much greater an opportunity to enjoy the charming prose. The three prongs of the tale are all deftly and satisfyingly resolved, and Inspector Gamache is once more shown to be a clever and very human police officer. Very enjoyable, the novel is recommended.
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