Review: Still Life

Still Life by Louise Penny
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Have been meaning to read this author for a long time. Armand Gamache is such an interesting man--observant, quiet, patient, poetry lover, listener. He a man proud of his Quebec roots and sensitive to the Anglos with whom he comes in contact. He is a leader, nurturer and role model for his subordinates. In this case, he finds himself in Three Pines one of several Eastern Townships--southeast of his home in Montreal. It is the time of Canadian Thanksgiving--October-- and an elderly woman has been found dead in the woods surrounding the village. She has been shot with a hunting arrow. Has she been murdered or is she the victim of a hunting accident gone horribly wrong?

Armand, Jean Guy Beauvoir and trainee, Yvette Nichol find themselves surrounded by the friends of Jane Neal, the victim, a retired school teacher and life-long resident of Three Pines. None of the members of this close knit group seems to have been the shooter and no one seems to have anything bad to say about the victim.

As Gamache tells the villagers at the meeting he has called to start the investigation-all will be questioned, many secrets will be revealed but only those relevant to the case will ever be revealed. If nothing else, the revealed secrets about each of these interesting people is enough to spend time reading the book. As it turns out, the solution to the mystery and the revelation of the victim, herself,, makes it one of the best books I've read in a long time.

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