“Still Life” by Louise Penny

I got into Penny’s books after the DC Book Festival this year. I happened to be ushering in Genre Fiction (which I didn’t know until the day of) and she was the last slot and packed the room, I thought there’d be a riot or something. And the way that she talked about this world and these characters that she’d created made me want to check out her work. So I started at the beginning.

This book centers around the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache as he tries to solve a murder in the small town of Three Pines in Canada. As he goes through his investigation, all of the villagers and members of his own squad come into focus. And the characters are what really sell this book. Every mystery novel has to flesh out its characters, otherwise you don’t suspect any of them, but this book goes to town with it. One great example is Nichol, a young agent with the investigation team. She could have very easily been left out of the story altogether, but instead Penny fleshes out her home life, her past, and her hopes. She’s not the nicest character, but there’s still something about her that I find incredibly relatable and compelling. Probably in that like her I’m a young woman trying to find my career haha.

And of course there’s Gamache. Intensely conscious and likeable, the book includes how he treats his team and even his thoughts on the police in general. There’s one conversation that he has with a black women in town where it mentions how the police treat minorities and people of color. This isn’t a crime book trying to shy away from its subjects and their real life counterparts.

But then there’s the murder itself. The case involves an old woman who dies just before she reveals to her friends that she’s an artist. So of course the plot involves a discussion of art, both hers and an important witness’s, Clara. It is rare that a work of literature, especially crime fiction, brings in another art form to have a serious discussion about it. On top of that there are multiple twists where you think you have it all figured out but then it gets turned on its head.

As a result I think my only spot of critique is the end. Due to the various twists, the ending is far from straightforward and as a result I am still unsure whether I fully understood it. But I do not want to spoil that part, so I’ll leave you to read it.