BURY YOUR DEAD
Louise Penny
Sphere, $36.99, pbk
The sixth story featuring the inspector, head of the homicide department of the Surete du Quebec, most of the action is in Quebec City, where Gamache has gone to recover from his mental and physical wounds after an action he led went dreadfully wrong.
Staying in the home of his former mentor, Emile Comeau, he barely registers that it is a bitterly cold midwinter except when he makes snowballs for his German shepherd, Henri, to catch.
As he broods guiltily on the disaster, hearing again and again the voice of the young cadet he believes he failed, Gamache drifts around the fortress city of Old Quebec and stumbles upon the Literary and Historical Society, one of the last bastions of the English in the area.
There, he begins some low-key research into James Cook's time in Quebec.
When Augustin Renaul, a despised amateur archaeologist, is found murdered in the library's basement, Gamache is reluctantly drawn into helping.
Infamous for his monomaniacal quest for the burial place of Quebec's founder, Samuel de Champlain, Renaul has dug under many buildings, not always with permission.
Penny's background is correct: Champlain's burial site is unknown, although generally it is believed to be near Notre-Dame de Quebec Cathedral.
Apparently, after his death on December 25, 1635, Champlain's body was buried in what was intended as a temporary grave, in a chapel which burned down, after which things became confused.
On top of this, Gamache is asked to look again at an earlier case, where a man was jailed for a killing in the forest near the village of Three Pines, the setting of earlier Gamache books.
That's another guilt trip for the inspector, who eventually arranges for re-examination of the case.
In both cases in Bury your Dead, a brilliant book, the murderer comes as a surprise and the reader is likely to be saddened to learn that otherwise likeable characters are capable of killing.
But isn't that what neighbours and friends often say? "I can't believe it. He was such a nice, quiet man."
- Gillian Vine is a Dunedin writer.
