Chief Inspector Gamache #21
It’s been a while. I wasn’t a huge fan of the last two Gamache books, or of the more recent thriller co-written with Melissa Fung, but with Miss Wolcott’s Ghost Louise Penny has returned to the form that has made me a giant supporter of her work. I’ll never forget the spell put on me by her first novel, Still Life, and that reading rapture was gifted to me again with this book. When I hit the three-quarter mark, I was glued to the pages and didn’t leave my chair.
Readers have come to expect many things from Penny’s novels – a complicated, thoughtful plot; wonderful characters; and a resolution that often leaves a lump in your throat (for this reader, in any case). This book does not disappoint on any of these fronts. Set again in Three Pines, the story focuses in on Gamache, Beauvoir, and another character who appears to be despised by both men. His story is teased out through the book, and I won’t provide a spoiler.
The basics: Gamache gets a panicked phone call in the middle of the night, with a caller saying merely “There’s a body in Lost Nation.” That of course is a sentence to launch a good story and it does. First Gamache has to find “Lost Nation” and when he does find it there is indeed a dead body on top of a grave, and the body has plants growing through it.
The plant is as big a mystery as the body itself. It appears to be a plant thought to be extinct, and with great care (and the help of a botanist) Armand transplants it to his own garden. The plant and the body are linked, but it takes the majority of the novel for Gamache and his team to discover exactly how they are connected. Along the way the team also discovers a marine disaster – worse than that of the Titanic – occurring just two years later. The investigation also involves this tragedy. It’s a real occurrence, and you’ll want to look it up as you read. It’s remarkable that it’s been so forgotten.
To tell much more would be to give away the delights of this plot. Always, the revelations are made via Gamache’s conversations with suspects and other people he encounters during his investigation. In this way, Penny very much reminds me of the great P.D. James, though Penny’s spirit is ultimately a more optimistic one than James’. These conversations and discoveries are the heart of this deeply complex and moving novel.
Penny also gifts the reader with some short visits with her series “regulars” – Reine-Marie, Ruth, Clara, Myrna, Gabri and Olivier, and even Rosa the duck. But for all it’s breadth of storytelling this is a focused book. It’s focused on Gamache’s and Beauvoir’s investigation, as well as their memories of the character despised by them both. This tighter focus makes the novel a very strong entry in this series, perhaps one of my favorites to date. — Robin Agnew