Title: Still Life

Author: Louise Penny

Book Length (Audiobook): 14 hours and 54 minutes

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Genre: Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Crime,

Read Start Date: March 20, 2022

Read Finish Date: March 21, 2022

Number in Book Series: 1

Brief Summary of the Plot from Goodreads: The discovery of a dead body in the woods on Thanksgiving Weekend brings Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his colleagues from the Surete du Quebec to a small village in the Eastern Townships. Gamache cannot understand why anyone would want to deliberately kill well-loved artist Jane Neal, especially any of the residents of Three Pines – a place so free from crime it doesn’t even have its own police force.

But Gamache knows that evil is lurking somewhere behind the white picket fences and that, if he watches closely enough, Three Pines will start to give up its dark secrets…

My Review: This is the first book in a series of books about Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. This book takes place in French Canada, in the small village of Three Pines. It was interesting to read a book about this location, as I don’t really know much about it. I generally liked the character of Gamache (although in one review I read it was pointed out that he spends a lot of time in cafes, eating pastries, or discussing them — I hadn’t thought of this while reading, but with hindsight this is so true!)

The murderer was not obvious, or at least not to me, so this kept me guessing the whole book. The clues were not so obvious that a monkey could figure it out (no disparagement to monkeys meant of course), and the discovery of the said clues were organic (following the pace and plot of the book), rather than forced. In other words, I could see that this investigation would actually unfold as it did in real life, with one piece building upon the previous.

The one thing that I did not like was the portrayal of the only female officer — she was portrayed as an arrogant upstart who thought the whole world was out to get her, that life was unfair, that Gamache was unfair etc. Basically, she was depicted as a whiny little fly, who only messed up the investigation but never furthered it. Way to throw your fellow woman under the bus, Louise Penny!

Other than that it was an entertaining read and one that I would definitely recommend.