Discovering Three Pines

Maybe it was because, in my marathon to a doctorate in English Literature, I had to read so many, mainly long, novels. Whatever the case, once I had achieved my academic goal, I generally read non-fiction in my spare time. Cedar, my wife, on the other hand, reads mainly novels, with non-fiction the rare exception. (Now for example she is about to spend time with Robert Reich’s memoir.) So it took some cajoling on her part to get me to make the fictional journey to Three Pines, the imaginary village south of Montreal that is the brainchild of bestselling Canadian author Louise Penny. But once I discovered the place with its repertory company of characters, both Francophone and Anglophone, I was hooked and am now on my fourth of the (currently) 20 novels in the series. The protagonist of all of them is Armand Gamache, in most of the books described as the Chief Detective Inspector of the Sureté de Québec’s Homicide Division, though he receives several promotions as the series goes on. Generally, his sidekick is Detective Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir, who in time becomes his son-in-law. They are both assisted by the steady, reliable Detective Lacoste, a woman who later becomes Chief Inspector.

​The hidden village of Three Pines with its collection of lovable weirdos, including the famous national poet Ruth with her pet duck, Rosa, whom her owner dresses according to the season and who is as foul-mouthed as her mama, is both background and foreground. There is the bistro with its gay owners, Beliveau’s general store, the BnB, and the used bookstore-cum-library owned by a portly black woman named Myrna. Often the time of a story is fall or Christmas, with the local kids inevitably playing hockey on a frozen field.

For a small, out-of-the-way village, lots of murders end up taking place or at least being solved there. Gamache is a thoughtful, reflective middle-aged man, large but not fat, armed with the politesse of his New World Francophone culture. Nonetheless, he speaks mainly English, with a mot or deux of the ancienne langue thrown in for flaveur. Although he always gets his man or woman, it usually takes around 350 pages for it to happen, and the author keeps us guessing till the piecemeal revelations of the last few chapters.

To say that the Three Pines novels are page-turners is an understatement, even for a confirmed nonfiction reader like me. We have a used bookstore of our own, The Bookworm, here in Boulder. One can sell books to them in exchange for credits to be used to buy “new” old books. The Bookworm has become our source of all things Penny.
​
Somehow the author, who is an admirable writer, keeps coming up with new plots and bad guys of both genders that you would never think were the perpetrators until they turn out to be. Now 67, Ms. Penny, whose works are loved in numerous countries and who is a much-decorated literary figure in Canada, in 2022 co-authored a mystery with her friend Hillary Rodham Clinton. It’s called State of Terror. I’ll get into it as soon as I finish my current Gamache mystery. Meantime, if you’re looking for a good read, you can’t do better than to dive into these high-value Penny novels. Bon Voyage! 

The lovely and talented author, Louise Penny.