The Chief Inspector Gamache series, books 5 and 6

I am now a full-fledged fan of Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Gamache series. When I read the first book in the series I did not care for it enough to continue to the next book. Later, I was encouraged by good reviews to read more of them. Books 2 and 3 in the series had their good points, and I found the 4th book, A Rule Against Murder (also published as The Murder Stone), to be especially good. But now, having read The Brutal Telling and Bury Your Dead in the same month, I am committed to reading the rest of the series.

Ideally I would have read The Brutal Telling in late summer or early autumn, as that is the time of year that the story takes place. It is a lovely time in Three Pines, but a dead body is found on the floor of the Bistro, owned by Olivier Brulé. No one in Three Pines admits to knowing the mysterious man found in the Bistro. The reader is aware that Olivier knows him, but he does not admit this until he is forced to.

Of course, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team are called in. The story centers around finding out the identity of the dead man, and determining who could have killed him, and who would have had a motive. By the end of the book the man has not been identified, and someone has been charged with the murder and convicted, but the ending feels open at that point.

In The Brutal Telling, three new characters are added to the Three Pines cast. The old Hadley house has new owners, Marc and Dominique Gilbert, and they plan to turn it into a spa / bed and breakfast. Marc’s mother, Carole, lives with them.

Bury Your Dead takes place in February of the following year, in Quebec City, when Quebec Winter Carnival (or Carnaval de Québec) is about to begin. It continues the story of the murder of the man called "The Hermit," when Chief Inspector Armand Gamache requests that Inspector Beauvoir reopen the investigation of that crime in Three Pines. Meanwhile Gamache is helping with an investigation in Quebec City, the death of a man fanatically obsessed with finding the burial site of Samuel de Champlain, who founded Quebec City. Gamache is in Quebec City to rest and recover from physical and emotional wounds due to an attack by terrorists. This story is slowly revealed to the reader as Gamache remembers the day of the attack, and his rush to save an agent who is being held hostage. So this book has three story lines, a structure I liked very much.

I did not love both of these books equally. Although both books were about the same length and neither was over 400 pages, The Brutal Telling seemed too long to me. The investigation felt never ending, and I kept waiting for something to happen to change the direction of the book. I also did not like the ending of the book. Bury Your Dead, however, seemed like the perfect length and maybe that was because it had three stories to tell and the balance between the three story lines was perfect. Together, the two books were a wonderful reading experience.

Louise Penny writes beautifully, and the characters and the settings she uses are very well done. The recurring characters in Three Pines are often either very strange and/or have negative characteristics, which seems an unusual choice for an author to make. But it is nice for the characters to be less than perfect and not always likable. I also enjoyed learning more about Quebec and its history in Bury Your Dead.

It was Bill at Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan who recommended reading The Brutal Telling and Bury Your Dead as a pair, and I did that. That greatly enhanced my reading of Bury Your Dead, because I would have forgotten key elements of the previous book if I had waited.


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Pub. data for The Brutal Telling

Publisher:   Minotaur Books, 2009
Length:      372 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Inspecter Gamache, #5
Setting:      Three Pines, Quebec,  Canada
Genre:        Police Procedural
Source:      Purchased at the Planned Parenthood book sale, 2010.


Pub. data for Bury Your Dead

Publisher:   Minotaur Books, 2010
Length:      371 pages
Format:      Trade Paperback
Series:       Inspecter Gamache, #6
Setting:      Quebec,  Canada
Genre:        Police Procedural
Source:      I purchased my copy April 2020.