Louise Penny, Still Life (2005)

[Denne serie er ikke oversat til dansk]

This Canadian novel is Louise Penny´s debut, and the first in the cozy Armand Gamache series.

The story takes place in the village of Three Pines. “Three Pines wasn´t on any tourist map, being too far off any main or even secondary road. Like Narnia, it was generally found unexpectedly and with a degree of surprise that such an elderly village should have been hiding in this valley all along. Anyone fortunate enough to find it once usually found their way back.”

But one day evil strikes in this little paradise, first when young hoodlums assault the queer owners of the local Bistro, later when 76-year-old Jane Neal, retired teacher and amateur painter, is killed. The villagers are shocked, and even more so when they realized their dear friend must have been murdered because she had decided to invite them all into her home for the first time ever.

No more about the plot, but Penny deserves much praise for a well-arranged plot teeming with old secrets and a number of rather convincing villagers, for better or worse.

The protagonist is Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, happily married, very successful in his career and a great judge of character. And here comes my only problem with Penny´s series: Gamache is simply too good, kind and forgiving to be true, and his nasty little piece of an agent, Yvette Nichols, is too stupid, unpleasant and persistently loathsome.

Will I read more? Yes, certainly – keeping my fingers crossed that one day Louise Penny will make Gamache as credible as her other characters.

See my review of the third in the series, The Cruellest Month.

Impending Louise Penny

As I warned you beforehand, I am not ready for a review today, but of course you deserve the solution to Wednesday´s Bait in the Box.

The book in question is Louise Penny, Still Life, the author´s debut from 2005, and the first in the Armand Gamache series.


Tomorrow´s post: there may be news about The Red Shoes.

Louise Penny, The Cruellest Month (2007)

[Denne roman er ikke oversat til dansk]

This novel is the third in the Armand Gamache series which takes place in Quebec, Canada. The review is the last of six for my cozy mystery challenge.

A quotation from the first page:
“You going tonight?” Clara asked, trying to distract the old poet from taking aim at Monsier Béliveau. “Are you kidding? Live people are bad enough; why would I want to bring one back from the dead?” With that Ruth whacked Monsieur Bélieau in the back of his head.

The village of Three Pines prepare for their Easter egg hunt, hiding wooden eggs around for the children. One gets an impression of the colourful villagers immediately, e.g. old Ruth Zardo who throws her eggs at people rather than trying to hide them. She was the one who warned the others against using chocolate eggs the first year, predicting that ´something bad will happen´. That year the villagers learnt that bears also like chocolate and quickly decided to substitute them with wooden eggs in the future.

This particular year offers special entertainment: a séance to wake up the dead. The first try has no effect at all, hence the medium (a psychic witch) suggests that they have another one in the abandoned Hadley house. As any reader could have predicted, something bad will happen again: apparently one of the participants is frightened to death.

Armand Gamache of the Sûreté is put on the case; an excellent agent as well as a kind and likeable person. Gamache has been to Three Pines before on a case related to the mysterious Hadley house. Apart from solving the case he has his own problems: some years ago he exposed a bent colleague, and since then strong forces within the Sûreté have wanted to get rid of him.
Canadian Louise Penny is brilliant at creating an atmosphere. Even though I don´t like superstition and psychics in crime fiction as a rule, I found this mystery more exciting and appealing than most of the traditional cozies.

One small minus: in the ongoing “civil war” between good and corrupt forces within Sûreté, Armand Gamache is almost too perfect, more like a saviour than a real human being.

See some other reviews here: Kerrie, Mysteries in Paradise and Cathy, Kittling: Books.

Plot, plot, plot ...

[Husk min bogkonkurrence, som udløber i dag ved midnat]
Måske undrer du dig over, at jeg får skrevet så få anmeldelser for tiden. Jo men det er fordi jeg har læst i den samme bog i fem dage nu. Kedelig bog, tænker du så. Nej da, en fantastisk og virkeligt spændende krimi. Jeg har bare brugt for få timer på at læse denne uge.

Hvad jeg så har lavet?
Hm, blogget og kommenteret. Ikke så meget som visse uger, men alligevel…
Skrevet ugens skriveøvelse og oversat den.
Udvalgt og redigeret nogle brilliante eksamenstekster til mine elever.

Og plottet og intrigeret!
- torsdag var der en af de andre deltagere i forfatterskolen som mailede til mig. Hun ville høre, om jeg kunne tænke mig at gå ind i et krimiprojekt sammen med hende og endnu et medlem af vores krimigruppe. Torsdag eftermiddag sagde jeg nej tak (jeg er alt for stolt og stædig til at lytte til andre. Fuldstændigt ufleksibel. I kender garanteret typen). Fredag eftermiddag sagde jeg måske. Lørdag morgen vågnede jeg op, med en hjerne som snurrede, blippede og vibrerede: noget var på vej. Så lørdag eftermiddag sendte jeg et foreløbigt udkast til mine krimi-medsøstre. Man har et standpunkt, til man tager et nyt.

Louise Pennys forunderlige rejse gennem (øh.. kig hellere selv på en globus).
Som mine mest trofaste læsere vil vide, vandt jeg fire bøger i diverse konkurrencer i begyndelsen af april. De tre bøger er ankommet for længst, men Louise Pennys canadiske krimi, som har mellemlandet hos Kerrie i Australien, har været undervejs til Region Nordjylland i umindelige tider. Jeg var virkelig ved at blive bekymret for den bog.

Så nu er jeg glad for at kunne forsikre jer, den er nået i sikker havn! Bogen er her, i en laset kuvert og med et hjørne, som har forsøgt at bryde ud. I det store og hele er den i god stand, og når den har haft tid til at restituere – klemt inde mellem nogle indbundne bøger på hylden – er jeg sikker på, den vil være lige så flad, som da trykpressen spyttede den ud.

Plotting & Scheeming
Maybe you are wondering why I write so few reviews right now. Well, that is because I have been reading the same book for five days now. Boring book, you think. Oh no, a brilliant and entertaining novel. I have just spent very few hours on reading this week.

What have I been doing instead?
Well, blogging & commenting. Not as much as in some weeks but …
Writing this week´s writing exercise and translating it.
Selecting and editing some brilliant exam texts for my students.

And PLOTTING AND SCHEEMING.
Thursday one of the other writing course participants mailed me. She wanted to know if I would be interested in writing a crime novel together with her and another member of our crime group. Thursday afternoon I said no (I am far too stubborn and proud to listen to anyone else. Totally inflexible. I am sure you all know the type). Friday afternoon I said perhaps. Saturday morning I woke up, feeling my brain spinning, blipping and wheezing: something was on its way. So Saturday afternoon I sent a preliminary plot to my partners in crime. So much for principles…

The Long and Dangerous Odyssey of a Poor Little Book.
As my faithful readers will know, I won four books in various competitions in early April. The three books arrived long time ago, but Louise Penny´s Canadian novel, The Cruellest Month, has been on its way from Australia for ever and ever. I was getting really worried about the poor book, I can tell you.

So now I am so happy to assure you it has reached a safe haven! The book has turned up like a bad penny, in a tattered jiffy-bag, with one corner trying to escape. On the whole, it has arrived in good shape and when it has had time to recover – tucked in between some hardbacks on the shelf – I am sure it will be as flat as it came from the printing press.

[Kerrie: just kidding - the book will be perfect! - and thank you for the beautiful bookmarks]