One is Harriet Landers, the niece of Myrna Landers, who owns the bookstore in Three Pines and is a close friend of the Gamaches. The other is Fiona Arsenault, whom they have helped in the years after her mother’s murder. I have a rule: I don't give 5 stars to series books. If a book is part of a larger series, I believe it needs to be judged on its merits and that of its fellow books. The highest I will go is 4.5 stars. This is a hugely satisfying mystery of course, but more than that, it’s a chilling morality tale. Nobody does evil quite as scarily as Louise Penny’ ANN CLEEVES William’s travels brought the world home, and Oxnead’s transformation was so dramatic and complete that Knyvett did not know if he would escape without undergoing some kind of transformation himself.

I enjoyed seeing the darker sides of Gamache. No human is a saint, we're all sinners. And not in any religious sense, we are by nature petty, jealous and vengeful - it's just that we contain this in different measures and some have so many more virtuous traits that their darker streaks rarely show. But they are there. Penny does not make you wait for it. Every chapter takes hold and propels you forward. You do not want to put it down.

In unsealing that room, an old enemy is released into their world. Into their lives. And into the very heart of Armand Gamache’s home. Armand and Ren-Marie are a model loving couple, and their family is by now a model, too. Goodness, kindness, prevails, and as things seem to get worse in the world (and in the books), Gamache’s insistent ethical messages get all the more insistent. “Cosies” were the way the early books were described; even Penny said the murders in the books were sort of incidental to her characters and their world. The book’s present is set in Three Pines following a graduation ceremony of college engineering graduates Harriet Landers and Fiona Arsenault, the now-grown female sibling from the earlier case. Fiona is staying with the Gamache family while her charismatic brother Sam, mistrusted by Gamache but not Beauvoir, is staying nearby. This part also works: Sam is clearly a malevolent force, and while we do see Fiona manipulating others, the novel sets up enough question marks that it’s unclear if Sam or Fiona is the ringleader. Gamache believes that Sam has it out for him while Beauvoir worries that Fiona is not to be trusted.

When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache first had Jean-Guy Beauvoir in his sights, Jean-Guy was a green, arrogant young man although Armand could see something in him that he wanted to nurture. The first case they worked together was a horrific one - the abuse of two young children and the death of their mother. Now, all those years later, those two young people were in Three Pines and Armand was uneasy. But it was when a long hidden room was discovered, one that had been hidden for one hundred and fifty years, that events in the lives of the Three Pines villagers, as well as Armand, Jean-Guy and the Surete du Quebec investigators, changed. The attic space also contains other odds and ends, including a medieval grimoire - a book with magic spells and incantations. In the following years Gamache and his wife Reine-Marie take Fiona under their wings, and make her feel like part of their family in Three Pines. Now Fiona and another young woman from Three Pines, Harriet Landers - niece of bookstore owner Myrna Landers - are graduating from engineering school and the village plans a big celebration. In the novel’s present day, Gamache and his wife are attending a ceremony at the college that combines a remembrance of the victims and the graduation of a new class of engineering students that includes two young women close to them. Penny delves into the nature of evil, sensitively exploring the impact of the dreadful events she describes while bringing a warmth and humanity to her disparate cast of characters that, unusually for a crime novel, leaves you feeling better about the world once you’ve finished’ BOOK OF THE MONTH, OBSERVERThis series is pretty consistent in terms of the quality of the writing and inventiveness of the plots. Not that they are all equally good, but it is surprising how often they completely capture my attention, and this one was no exception. The book is a thriller filled with assaults, murders, corrupt cops, and more. The story also refers to the (real life) 1989 massacre of fourteen female engineering students at Montreal's École Polytechnique, by an anti-feminist gunman. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Robert Bathurst, who does a good job, though his 'women's voices' are a bit off. The importance of The Paston Treasure lies in the international scope and interest of the objects portrayed, reflecting both nature and the skills of humans. It was the subject of an exhibition in 2018 in which Norwich Castle Museum in partnership with the Yale Center for British Art in the USA, reunited, for the first time in 350 years, as many as possible of the objects depicted in the painting. [6] [7]

Second, the novel’s main antagonist, the serial killer Fleming, is imbued with too many contradictory characteristics. A religious fanatic, his initial imprisonment was for creating a seven-headed beast of Babylon by murdering and stitching together seven victims, yet his murder plan for Gamache is altogether areligious. That seems inconsistent. Additionally, Fleming isn’t charismatic or charming; he’s terrifying, and the novel describes both Gamache and Beauvoir’s feelings of horror in Fleming’s presence. The book characterizes Fleming, in jail, as simply radiating evil. Yet, he is able to pass for some time as the loving, kind, and wise minister of Three Pines’ local church, caring for and loving a dying wife. Nobody so much as says, “Yeah, I don’t like that guy” in the novel. He also seems to have unlimited funds and resources: How else are you able to have your entire identity in prison swapped with someone else’s so you can escape, leaving a trail of murder behind as you tie up loose ends and send your wife traveling as far as the UK to help set up your murder plan? Where does this money come from? How is he able to create totally new identities for himself? Finally, the reveal that Fleming is related to Fiona (but not Sam) doesn’t add anything to the plot or the characters, because ultimately that relationship is unrelated to the reasons he decides to target Gamache in the first place. This situation sets the stage for what ends up being the main conflict in the novel. A secret room is found in Harriet’s aunt’s attic, with a huge, seemingly-historical painting that was actually painted recently and which seems to contain clues to some impending doom for Gamache. This room, the painting, and the murder case they begin to unravel through it has great potential that ultimately peters out. It doesn’t end up being a red herring so much as just a big old billboard advertising a murder plan. The Sam and Fiona conflict also gets wrapped into this convoluted murder plan that veers into unrealistic and overwrought. a b c "A World of Curiosities by Louise Penny". Publishers Weekly. 24 Aug 2022 . Retrieved 2023-03-26.The objects were collected by Sir Robert and Sir William who made acquisitions on a long journey travelling through Europe and on to Cairo and Jerusalem. The collection consisted of over 200 objects and included many natural curiosities made into decorative art objects, such as mounted seashells and ostrich eggs. The painting was unknown for centuries, and before it was donated to the Norwich Castle Museum in 1947, its last owner warned that it was "very faded, of no artistic value, only curious from an archaeological point of view." [4] It is now on display, with the strombus shell in an enamelled mount, as part of the Norwich Castle Museum Collection.

She reuses the bad cops want to kill good cops as well as a an escape from prison due to corrupt jail warden. The killer is a psychopath who decapitates his victims. She repeatedly alludes to photos showing his horrific crimes, planting images in your mind. In this book we learn that Gamache first met Jean-Guy at an outlying Sûreté station when Gamache was investigating the murder of a woman named Clothilde Arsenault. Agent Beauvoir - whose behavior verged on insubordination - had been relegated to a desk job in the department's basement, but Gamache saw something in the young man and made him part of the Sûreté homicide squad. it begins in the past, with recollections of the murder of a prostitute and drug addict whose two children were discovered to be victims of sexual abuse. The case has haunted Gamache and his second in command Jean Guy Beauvoir for many years.Sir William Paston, first Baronet (1610–1663), the primary collector in the story and one of the possible commissioners of The Paston Treasure, was famous in his time for his extensive travels. Following the death of his first wife, Lady Katherine, and spurred it seems by an insatiable curiosity, he made an unusually extensive tour of Italy, Egypt, and the Middle East in 1638–39. Upon inheriting Oxnead Hall in the same decade—it was originally built by his distant uncle, the infamous sea captain Clement Paston in the 1560s—William eventually transformed the Tudor house into an Italianate villa, with classical sculpture and parterre gardens inspired by his journeys. His cousin, Thomas Knyvett, captured the atmosphere of the newly transformed Oxnead in a letter sent to his wife in February 1640, less than a year after Paston’s travels: a b c Cannon, Margaret (2023-01-13). "Review: Five mystery books to start the year with a thrill". The Globe and Mail . Retrieved 2023-03-26. Godyear, Sheena (5 Dec 2022). "How a Montreal Massacre survivor became a character in a Louise Penny detective novel". CBC. The Paston Treasure is one of the most enigmatic paintings in Western art. A new book and exhibition, now on view at the painting’s home in the Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery, in Norfolk, UK (June 23–September 23, 2018), tell the story of the family of collectors who commissioned the work—which is still unattributed and largely shrouded in mystery—and delves into their obsession for beautiful objects. In addition to an excellent mystery, Penny explores sexual abuse of children, misogyny, and gun crimes while holding me in the safety and comfort of Three Pines and the familiar cast of characters.