The Beautiful Mystery: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel [Hardcover]

The Beautiful Mystery is the eighth entry in Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series. This series has become one of my favourites, but I have to say that this latest book is exceptional.

The series is set in Canada. Gamache is with the Sûreté du Québec, as is his second in command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir. In The Beautiful Mystery, Gamache and Beauvoir are called out on an unusual case and location. A monk at a monastery hidden away in the wilds of Québec has been murdered. The monastery has rebuffed visitors for the last four hundred years. There are only twenty four residents, all who live with a vow of silence - except when they are singing ancient Gregorian chants. Twenty three suspects.

Penny has yet again devised an ingenious 'closed room' mystery that had me guessing until the last pages. The exploration of the monastic lifestyle and the chants were especially interesting. In her acknowledgments Penny says "I wanted to explore this beautiful mystery. How just a few notes can take us to a different time and place. Can conjure a person, an event, a feeling. Can inspire great courage, and reduce us to tears. And in the case of this book, I wanted to explore the power of ancient chants, Gregorian chants. On those who sing them, and those who hear them." The explanation of the effect of the music on the listener was compelling. I listened to the audio version of this book and the inclusion of chants at the beginning and end of the book prompted me to put holds on some Gregorian chant CDs at the library.

But the real draw of Penny's books are the characters - especially Gamache. He is such a wise, intuitive, caring person. But he has faced his share of heartache - most notably with Beauvoir. A previous case has left both men physically and emotionally damaged. The healing has started, but has miles to go. A surprise appearance by Gamache's superior at the monastery complicates things further.
And take Gamache to a very dark place. I become so invested and immersed in the characters that populate Penny's novels that they almost feel quite real. Gamache and Beavoir's complicated relationship and their attempts to continue moving forward despite the past make them all the more believable.

Penny's storytelling is rich and varied, full of nuance and inflection. The pared down setting for this book was perfect, echoing the raw truths that are exposed. The ending has only left me hoping that Penny gives us more Gamache before too much time elapses.

I chose to listen to this latest book and may well do so with all the Gamache books. There's always a worry that a narrator will not be the right fit for the mental image you've created for a character. Ralph Cosham was the reader for The Beautiful Mystery...and he was perfect. He has a rich, full bodied voice that is deep and sonorous, conveying the quiet strength of Gamache. The cadence, rhythm, pauses and more sound like actual conversation, not simply a reading of pages. The accent passes muster and is easily understood.

Just an absolutely fantastic read/listen/series - highly recommended.

"The Beautiful Mystery" is the 8th volume in Louise Penny's novels about Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, head of homicide investigation for the Surete du Quebec (you'll need to add the accents yourself, my keyboard can't do it here), and his second-in-command Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir. All the other novels have centred on Three Pines, an Anglophone community in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, but here we are taken to somewhere different: the remote monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, where a long-thought extinct order of monks, the Gilbertines, live and pray and sing together in the worship of their God, in a restricted household of 24 souls. Sing, no, chant - they are the exquisite repository of the sound of the plainsong, the Gregorian Chant, and they have made a record that made its way around the world, bringing millions of dollars to the cloister and thousands of "fans" clamouring to enter. Which the monks would never allow, until one of them, the choirmaster himself, second in "command" after the abbot, is found dead, murdered, in a secluded garden. Only one of the 23 monks still alive could have done this deed, but who? Gamache and Beauvoir are determined to find out, even though it means that they themselves must remain in this remote, enclosed place, with all of their own demons as well.... You won't read my reviews of earlier books in this series, because I first discovered it via a friend's recommendation, picked up an e-version of the first novel, fell completely in love with it and then downloaded e-versions of the next six in the series - all in May or early June 2011, just before going to California for my mother's 80th birthday; I read all 7 books in 2 weeks on Kindle while completely unable to access a computer to write a review of any one of them. One thing to know - I read them all, entirely, back-to-back, no other reading interspersed (not even a newspaper). Something that I have literally *never* done before with any author or series. So waiting for this 8th book has been torture for me for the past 14 months. Now, finally having it and having read it, I can't begin to express how articulate and fascinating and glorious this book is; what I can say is that, at the end, my heart is breaking. Jean-Guy, Jean-Guy, save yourself, no one else can now.... If you have read the series, you'll know; if you haven't, you need to start with the first ("Still Life") and go on from there. Meantime, my heart is broken.

Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache delivers again and again. Traditional mystery fans will like the whodunit plot, but those who have a literary bend like me will appreciate the well-written dialogue and excellent story arch.

Indeed, it is a page turner, but Louise Penny’s prowess is in delivering fallible heroes in a way that still makes us cheer. I’m speaking of course of Inspector Gamache, but also of Lieutenant Jean-Guy Beauvoir, who is suffering from an addiction to painkillers.

The evil twist, beyond the murder at hand, is the psychological foul play used by the police force’s headman who has it out for Gamache and his team. I won’t tell you any more about what happens here because it is all too irksome.

For a book set in a monastery with an ancient secret to hide, this novel sure is illuminating. I 100% am in love with Louise Penny’s Inspector, the village of Three Pines and this awesome series.