Mystery and Juicy Writing in The Brutal Telling


In Louise Penny’s fifth book about Inspector Armand Gamache, a dead body appears in a bistro in the Quebec town of Three Pines. Nobody knows the murder victim, and Penny spends a good deal of time at the beginning showing us how the town and Gamache come together to figure out this first piece of the puzzle.

The Hermit, as the murder victim in The Brutal Telling is first known, is the focus of the investigation, and Penny does solid work keeping her readers interested in knowing who exactly the man was. By the end, we have a fuller picture of the man, and sense we know him just as well as the living characters in the book.

Penny takes us into the woods, and we feel like we are clomping through the brush and muck along with Gamache when he finds the cabin where the Hermit lived. Far from a rustic interior, the house contains antique treasures that add to the intrigue of the dead man.

From Gamache to his partner Jean Guy Beauvoir, to townspeople Marc and Dominique Gilbert and bistro owners Olivier and Gabri, Penny spends her time unveiling traits, flaws, and small details of her characters. In the end it feels as though we’ve sat at a table with each of these people, heard their stories, seen them move, and we care. Penny’s prose is full of variety and interesting word choices, making it so the reader is pushed along not only for the story, but for the enjoyment of the writing.

Although this is the fifth in her series about Gamache, a reader can pick up The Brutal Telling and feel as though they haven’t missed anything by not having read the other books.

Thanks to Karen Hennessy for recommending The Brutal Telling.  


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