Review: Bury Your Dead

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So atmospheric--I've been to Quebec City but never in winter. Still living in Vermont it was not difficult to imagine the Capital during the short, cold, dark days with lots of snow and wind. This was the most emotional book of the series, thusfar. A man in Three Pines who had come to be a friend is in prison for having murdered a mysterious hermit in the Quebec woods. Armand and Beauvoir were instrumental in the identification and conviction of this man, but now Gamache is not sure they nabbed the real murderer.

Both Jean-Guy and Armand are on medical leave, both having been shot in the prevention of a terrorist attack on the largest hydroelectric dam in the Northeast. Both almost died from their wounds and both are suffering emotionally from the loss of a young new agent the terrorists had used as diversion from their plan. Armand is particularly distressed because he blames himself for young Agent Morin's death--having in his estimation made a serious error in judgement just as time for the Agent was running out.

As usual, both men are involved in several investigations at once. Armand has taken refuge in Quebec City with his mentor and teacher, the retired Emile. With him is his trusty dog, Henri, a dog toy gadget the Chuck-It, described to him by the entrapped Agent Morin while waiting for his rescue. On long walks, Armand relives the lengthy conversations he and Morin had. But, he also, spends time in the English library looking through old books on Quebec history and through these visits becomes involved in the murder investigation of the death of a man looking for the long lost grave of Samuel de Champlain.

Jean- Guy , in the meantime, has been dispatched by Gamache to Three Pines. He is to unofficially and quietly reinvestigate the death of the old hermit.

As always, by the end of the book, both murders have been solved, the characters in both locations have been even more deeply revealed and the two men, themselves, have come to more fully understand themselves and their relationship to each other.

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