Inspector Gamache is visiting Jean Guy, his old friend and
former boss, in Quebec in an effort to recuperate from the
physical and emotional wounds sustained during an agency
wide effort to thwart a domestic terrorist attack.
To pass the time, he spends hours in an English library
reading. There he meets Renaud, a historian obsessed with
finding the burial site of Champlian, the founder of Quebec.
When a body is discovered in the basement, Gamache finds
himself unwittingly drawn into the investigation.
This was a sad yet fascinating story. While struggling to
come to terms with the deaths of so many agency men, Gamache
finds himself compelled to search for the body of Samuel de
Champlain as this new mystery unfolds. A second mystery
unfolds as Gamache responds to letters of concern by sending
his deputy back to Three Pines. He must follow his mentor's
footsteps or fail in his attempt to discover whether beloved
Bistro owner, Olivier, really killed the Hermit.
Ms. Penny has given the reader an in-depth look at the city
of Quebec and its origins. She also recognizes the
historical and present-day struggles between the French and
the English speaking citizens of Quebec.
It is Winter Carnival in Quebec City, bitterly cold and
surpassingly beautiful. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache has
come not to celebrate but to recover from an investigation
gone hauntingly wrong. But violent death is inescapable,
even in the seemingly peaceful Literary and Historical
Society--where an obsessive historian's search for the
missing remains of the founder of Quebec ends bizarrely in
murder. Injured himself and in need of rest, Gamache cannot
walk away from a crime that threatens to ignite
long-smoldering tensions between the English and the French.
Meanwhile, he receives letter after letter from the village
of Three Pines, where beloved Bistro owner Olivier was
recently convicted of murder. "It doesn't make sense,"
Olivier's partner writes every day. "He didn't do it, you
know." Despite the overwhelming case against Olivier,
Gamache sends his deputy back to Three Pines to make sure
that nothing was overlooked.
Through it all, in his painstaking quest for justice,
Gamache must relive the terrible events that killed one of
his men before he can begin to bury his dead.