"The Nature of the Beast" by Louise Penny

In The Nature of the Beast, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sureté Québecois has become simply Monsieur Gamache, a retired officer. He has retreated to the remote and tiny village of Three Pines, Québec, but trouble soon follows him there. Louise Penny has worked more of her familiar magic in this entry, either the eleventh or twelfth entry in the Chief Inspector Gamache series, depending on your source.

As this story starts, a fanciful and attention-grabbing nine year-old announces to all and sundry at a local bistro that he has found a big gun, and it has a monster carved on its side. The boy Laurent is soon murdered because his observational skills are keen (though few believe him) and his big mouth cannot be subdued.

This is my first encounter with the Inspector Gamache series. He has been through the wars for his department, and the author’s fondness for her hero is evident. There are features of this story that weaken it, however. The murdered boy lacks the understanding that a responsible adult should really see the immense weapon hidden in the remote forest; that such a weapon could indeed be hidden for so long; that the Canadian intelligence service would perpetuate dangerous secrets at the expense of local citizens’ safety – all these plot factors placed a strain on my credulity, even as a fiction reader in good standing.

Be all that as it may, this mystery does contain the reasoning and deductive sequences which readers expect. And we can tell how much affection the author has for her hero, given the sympathetic portrayal. I have read a few mystery series in my time, and I can understand the attraction of Ms. Penny’s popular Inspector Gamache novels.