AUTHOR: LOUISE PENNY
Pages: 374
Date: 31/12/2010
Grade: 5+
Details: no. 5 Armand Gamache
Library
What a great book to finish the year with.
This is the fifth Chief Inspector Armand Gamache mystery by Louise Penny, and everyone of them has been a triumph.
Her characters are interesting and very real to life. No such thing as black and white distinctions in these books. Everybody in the books has their good and their bad sides, and that's one of the reasons these books are so fascinating.
Another reason is that the mystery is always well plotted and the solution always makes sense.
This book starts with two men talking quietly in the middle of the night in a secluded cabin in a forest. Before the night is over, one of them will be dead, but is the other the murderer?
This is the fifth Chief Inspector Armand Gamache mystery by Louise Penny, and everyone of them has been a triumph.
Her characters are interesting and very real to life. No such thing as black and white distinctions in these books. Everybody in the books has their good and their bad sides, and that's one of the reasons these books are so fascinating.
Another reason is that the mystery is always well plotted and the solution always makes sense.
This book starts with two men talking quietly in the middle of the night in a secluded cabin in a forest. Before the night is over, one of them will be dead, but is the other the murderer?
Chief Inspector Gamache and his team are called to the quiet and secluded little town of Three Pines when the body of a man is found in the Bistro belonging to Olivier and Gabri. Nobody seems to know who the man is, where he came from or how his corpse ended up in the Bistro.
Discovering where the man lived should have answered at least a few questions, but instead the contents of his secluded cabin only throw up more questions. Soon Gamache and his team are not only trying to solve a murder, but also trying to figure out where all the treasures came from, and trying to decipher a secret code. And as some of the answers slowly emerge, they lead the team to discoveries that leave the idyllic town shell-shocked.
I truly enjoyed the reading experience this book gave me. Penny tells the story at a sedate pace with a lot of eye for detail and never in a hurry to get from one revelation to another. Yet, the revelations are there for the reader who is paying attention.
Discovering where the man lived should have answered at least a few questions, but instead the contents of his secluded cabin only throw up more questions. Soon Gamache and his team are not only trying to solve a murder, but also trying to figure out where all the treasures came from, and trying to decipher a secret code. And as some of the answers slowly emerge, they lead the team to discoveries that leave the idyllic town shell-shocked.
I truly enjoyed the reading experience this book gave me. Penny tells the story at a sedate pace with a lot of eye for detail and never in a hurry to get from one revelation to another. Yet, the revelations are there for the reader who is paying attention.
While this is not a traditional page-turner, it is a book that I could only put down with great difficulty.
Now to find the next book in the series, I hope I'll find it soon.