BURY YOUR DEAD

Louise Penny has won much praise for her Inspector Gamache novels, beginning with the CWA John Creasey Dagger for the first in the series, Still Life. It’s not hard to see why. Bury Your Dead, first published in the UK in hard cover in September 2010, is the sixth Gamache novel, and now appears in mass paperback.

Full of atmosphere, well written and with an intriguing structure and plot, it is set in Old Quebec City, where the heritage of the small English community is lovingly guarded in the Literary and Historical Society library. But when the body of a keen archaeologist is discovered in its basement, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is unexpectedly thrust into a complex and gripping case, the origins of which lie deep in Quebec’s history.

After a police raid led by Gamache had gone badly wrong, for which he blames himself, he takes time off to recover by visiting his former mentor in Quebec City, where he wants to research the story of another leader who had made a mistake that cost him dear – Général Montcalm at the 1759 Battle of Quebec. And then comes the investigation into the murder at the Literary and Historical Society. There is a third quest that occupies Gamache’s mind too. In a small village near Gamache’s home city Montreal a hermit had been murdered and Gamache had put the killer behind bars. Or so he believes, but was that another mistake?

None of these three strands is connected – save by Gamache’s need to hunt down the truth. It makes for a novel full of suspense, history and beguiling mystery.