'That’s what this is about, Inspector. Bringing all the terrible stuff up from where it’s hiding.’
‘Just because you can see it,’ Beauvoir persisted, ‘doesn’t make it go away.’
‘True, but until you see it you haven’t a hope.’ [loc. 3510]
Clara Morrow, after a crippling attack of nerves, has celebrated her first solo art show: first at the gallery in Montreal and then in the little village of Three Pines, which can't be found on any maps. Her husband Peter, who is trying not to show his envy, discovers a dead body in their garden the morning after the festivities. The dead woman is Clara's old friend-turned-enemy, Lillian Dyson: near her body is an Alcoholics Anonymous token. Was Lillian dealing with step 9 in the programme, making amends to those you've hurt? And was she murdered because somebody couldn't forgive the pain she'd inflicted?
There are different kinds of pain in this novel. Gamache is still mourning the agents who died in the factory debacle (Bury Your Dead) and Jean-Guy Beauvoir, his second-in-command, is still in constant physical pain from the injuries he sustained. Jean-Guy has also separated from his wife, and is trying to summon the courage to invite another woman on a date. And there is Peter's consuming envy, and Lillian's vicious art criticism, and Ruth Zardo's bitterness, and art critic Denis Fortin's homophobia.
This is a novel about forgiveness and its lack, about addiction and breaking the cycle, about secrets that ferment and others that are spoken. Penny has an extraordinary knack for observing and describing emotions: her large cast all have complex and vivid internal landscapes, and Gamache has the gifts of understanding and compassion -- as well as a steely determination to solve the murder and see justice done. That he does so with grace and sympathy is, for me, the appeal of this series. I have stocked up on the next few novels to get me through the British winter...
Not for the first time Three Pines struck Myrna as the equivalent of the Humane Society. Taking in the wounded, the unwanted. The mad, the sore. This was a shelter. Though, clearly, not a no-kill shelter.
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