Still Life

Though this is Penny’s first in the “Three Pines” series featuring CI Armand Gamache, I’ll confess that I initially read it out of order. I picked up a later Penny book and liked it well enough to go back and start from the beginning.

This book feels like a debut. The writing is good, but not quite as sure-handed as more recent books (which makes sense). It introduces us to Armand Gamache, a seasoned detective if ever there was one, and to the cast of characters in Three Pines.

By the time I finished it the first time around, I’d… show more.

Imagine a tiny village in Quebec, hidden from both maps and memories, visible only to those who cannot fit in anywhere else.

Imagine the artists, poets, doctors, philosophers, musicians, artisans, and murderers who might gather there—and then imagine the man from Montréal who is tasked, again and again, with uncovering their crimes. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, fallen from grace for reasons of his own, traveling one more time to a secret village of geniuses—or, perhaps, a village of secret geniuses.

Either way, he’ll have to outsmart at least one of them before they kill again.

Like the concentric circles from a pebble dropped into a pond, a murder in the small Canadian village of Three Pines has far-reaching effects. Armand Gamache, a chief inspector from Montreal, brings his quiet but powerful presence to the investigation. Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir, a handsome man a little too full of himself, adds some insights. Meet the wife who thinks her art inferior when compared to her husband’s and the poet whose oral language belies her gift for expressing herself in print. All are human beings with vices as well as virtues.

Still Life, the first book in the Three Pines mystery series, introduces Louise Penny’s engaging protagonist Inspector Armand Gamache, who is battling corruption in the Sûreté du Quebec police force. It also introduces Three Pines, a fictional village in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, and a co-star in most of the 17 books in the series. The Three Pines novels explore two different genres: the traditional cozy, as Gamache solves each book’s murder; and the crime thriller, as he investigates the intrigues in his own police department.

Published in 2006, Still Life won the New Blood Dagger, Arthur Ellis, Barry, Antony,… show more.

Set in Canada, this book features my favourite police detective of them all—Armand Gamache. This is the first of a series, and I liked it the best of them all. Gamache is utterly lovable, and even years after reading the book I can still enjoy thinking about him. Again, a small community is shaken by the violent death of one of its residents. There is a subtle thread of morality and ‘right behaviour’ throughout, which adds another dimension to the story, along with a touch of gentle humour. It is one of the most ‘ feel-good’ novels I can remember.

The marvelous Louise Penny creates the perfect cozy location of Three Pines set in a village near Montreal. It seems like an idyllic location where nothing very wrong can happen... until a murder occurs. Pick up Still Life for the skillful and engaging Surete du Quebec officer, Inspector Gamache, and the cast of quirky characters, including a duck-owning poet who's a volunteer fire chief.  

Still Life introduces Armand Gamache, of the Surete du Quebec, another man with a happy marriage and a prodigious education, perfectly bilingual because of his time at Cambridge. His belief in kindness is a guiding principle in his work, and he is honest to the core. He famously lives in the Brigadoon-like village of Three Pines, which ‘does not appear on any historical map’. Like his colleagues here, he is a deep and analytical observer of the human condition and believes in thinking before he speaks.