The Beautiful Mystery

I have been “running” Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache mysteries since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. I don’t read mysteries usually, but hers are addicting.

This book would make a fine Christmas-time read. It tickles our thinking about “the divine” and about being human. 

This Penny murder mystery takes Gamache and Beauvoir into the Quebec wilderness to a monastery known for its chanting. The monks here try to “touch the divine” in everything they do while distancing themselves from the recent killing.

I love the author’s thematic artistry with light and darkness, as well as her sensory threading in a… show more.

The abbey of St.-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups and its immediate surroundings is so much a part of this mystery novel that it almost becomes a character in its own right. Louise Penny has woven a complex plot in the tradition of Agatha Christie (isolated location, every inhabitant a suspect), and has infused the narrative with her own trademark attention to character development. Even those readers who are unfamiliar with Chief Inspector Gamache and his side-kick, Inspector Beauvoir will quickly come to care about their relationship and their futures. 

I am a great fan of Louise Penny’s Gamache series, and this book is one… show more.

In this installment of her beloved Three Pines series, Penny locates the crime in a remote abbey in Quebec, where a couple of dozen monks – renowned for their singing – are cloistered. When the choir director is murdered, enter the series hero Inspector Gamache, who unfolds a story of timeless yet sinister beauty about the origins of Gregorian chant. This is the second book on my Best Five list that is set in a monastery, which speaks to how I can’t resist well-written mysteries set in closed communities – there’s just something so frightening and compelling about that small… show more.

Set against the backdrop of a secluded monastery deep in the Quebec wilderness, we are also dropped into the middle of the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series, which in my opinion is a better place to begin than with book one of the series. By the time you’re done, you’ll want to dig into Gamache from beginning to end with all his quirky friends, enemies, and family, and the blurred lines between good and evil.

Gamache is the hero of heroes filled with all the character strengths and weaknesses that make him so respected, lovable, and misunderstood. This mystery has… show more.

Full disclosure: I’m not a fan of all of Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache novels. I find some too warm and fuzzy. However, The Beautiful Mystery grabbed me, despite a subplot focused on police in-fighting. The setting—a remote Quebec monastery, seemingly out of time—is so well done you feel you’re there. Remoteness is a Louise Penny signature: she transports you to apparently sedate locales and drops you into arcane plots. In The Beautiful Mystery, the clues and red herrings fall fast and furious. It takes longer for the perpetrator to fall, which makes for an excellent mystery read.