Bury Your Dead: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel

I'm repeating what I've read in other reviews - when you read one of Louise Penny's novels, you are not only transported to another place, you feel like you intimately know the characters themselves. What I especially appreciate about this particular book is how she deftly weaves together several different cases into one story, with all the intelligence and pathos that I've come to appreciate in her writing.

Penny continues to top herself with each book. This one is so wonderfully complex and heartfelt, and you will be captivated from the start. Her books are pure magic.

I had a hard time with everything going on at once. As soon as I got the hang of it, enjoyed the book very much. Looked forward to each section and learned about Quebec in turn. Thank you.

When I not too long ago read the first Gamache mystery I knew I had to continue the series. This #6 gave me all I was expecting with Louise Penny’s sharp insights and wisdoms, but this one moved me more than before, and brought tears a couple of times. These people are so fleshed out and have taken up room in my heart that I become invested in their journeys. On to #7!

I've become obsessed with this series. Very few authors can make their characters this real, this human. In the first few books, you meet the characters. And, as odd as it sounds, you feel that you have met them. I have read literally thousands of novels and this is not as common as you might think!This book, though, it's so amazing that I'm not even sure how to review it. Gripping? Well, yes. Great storyline? Obviously. But I cannot seem to find the words to adequately convey what I'm feeling. Read the series and them when you get to this one, see what happens to these new friends. It's a fantastic journey! So happy that there are many more in the series!

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that touched me so much. I had to stop reading a couple of times because I was overcome with the story. Ignore advice about skipping this or that book in the series. Read them all, in order. It is necessary to build each character to understand what happens and why.Just exquisite characters and plots. On to book 7, after I recover.

I am reading the Gamache series in order. So frustrated after reading The Brutal Truth, Bury Your Dead answers many questions, but it brings more questions to mind; and I am loving it.A solid read with insight into Chief Inspector Gamache's and Beauvoir's grief and healing after such tragedy. Spoiler alert: I will miss Officer Morin. I was looking forward to his character growth in future stories. Got a bit angry, but it was an integral part of the telling.The books are becoming treasured moments and a world I would love to visit. I become invested in the characters; buy books from Myrna, dinner with Clara and Peter, breakfast with Gabri and Olivier and sparring with Ruth Zardo.Not much of a review, is it? But, a recommendation.

I enjoyed the history, culture, and physical environment of Quebec, especially Quebec City that I recently visited and hiked. I remember touring the Plains of Abraham, the Chateau Frontenac, the walled city, and even the bistro where Louise Penny penned her mysteries. It took a while to keep the two murders straight because of abrupt shifts and time warps. Many red herrings that kept me guessing. One complaint is about repetition. The same dialogue or narration gets repeated a number of times. This caused me to imagine that I was taken back to earlier pages. Not sure why the author does this as it seems tedious. All the characters are engaging, many quirky. The relationships between Gamache, Beauvoir, and Emile are fascinating and poignant. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes mysteries and of course Louise Penny’s fans.

Tomorrow we will be in Quebec City and have the pleasure of taking the Bury Your Dead tour. Of course, I read this book when it was first published as I read all of Louise's books the minute they are available. This week I reread the book to refresh my memory before our tour. It is amazing to get caught up in the story and yet not remember all the details. It was like reading it for the first time. And the emotion, the tears at the end were all real.I had the honor of meeting Louise at a book signing many years ago; she is a delightful woman, one you would want as a friend. She is also a great talent and her books are a gift to all of us. Book 19 will be published next month. I can hardly wait to see where she will take us next.

Book Six of the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series is the saddest so far. There is a sense of impending doom as we relive the memories of Gamache and Beauvoir during the countdown of their last case. A literal countdown that is infused with such sadness and feelings of helplessness.There are several threads to follow and the chapters do not necessarily delineate the different perspectives so you must pay attention.This installment in the Armand Gamache series includes FOUR mysteries in one:• Who really killed the man in the woods in the town of Three Pines?• Who killed an amateur archaeologist in Quebec?• Where is Quebec's founder, Samuel de Champlain, buried?What happened recently to Armand Gamache and his team, resulting in their injuries and PTSD?Throughout the story we come to understand a horrible case that took place, through the memories Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his second in command, Jean Guy Beauvoir, who are both suffering flashbacks and PTSD from what transpired.Three other mysteries run parallel in this book. Gamache is in Quebec recovering emotionally as well as physically from the earlier traumatic events. He becomes involved in a murder case steeped in politics, secrecy, and history. Meanwhile he directs Jean-Guy Beauvoir to take his convalescence in Three Pines and try to make sure that they did convict the right person of murder from Book Five.I highly recommend this series and recommend that you read them in order. I think this is my favorite book of the series, thus far.

I've been reading Mme. Penny's series and becoming more and more engaged in Chief Inspectors Gamâche's world book by book, but this one I cannot leave without comment. She is a master artist of a writer who adds such depth to her characters, such delicate detail, that one tiny detail is what can differentiate the causation of murder. One would think that would be shallow and a simple herring that took the reader to the "proper" killer, instead of away from him, and therefore, a rather farcical construct, deeply disappointing. It could be if it were someone else, someone who"constructed" mysteries and churned them out according to a formula, but such is not the case here.Madame Penny is no simple author of mysteries, she is a maîtresse of people perception and translation of them to us. Without giving away too much too quickly, she allows the inspector to see and hear the hearts of all the characters in her novels and us, too. We are privileged to understand the why of murder, which is very often, too often, a hurt, ugly twisted and damaged beyond the current situation, but perfectly understandable if we just pay attention. I end up feeling sympathy for her killers, almost forgiveness, although she has not created a positive judgment environment for them. If anything, as the reader, I believe each one absolutely needs conviction if for no other reason than Gamâche believes they do. She has four rules for a good person that are pretty much four of my father's five, he adds only that one speak no evil about people, and as a writer, that one has got to go out the window at least in terms of her fiction. I give her five stars absolutely unreservedly, because she goes beyond mystery and engages my heart, my mind, and no small bit of my soul. Merci, madame.And by the way...if you want a bit of travelogue. I've never been to Trois Pins. I would like to just wholesale move there, but Quebec City? She has nailed it. Put it on your bucket list if you haven't. The middle of winter is not my season EVER, but it is that beautiful, in the spring, it would be very difficult, if not impossible not to emigrate en masse, as it is even more beautiful, the people more kind, the food more delicious, than you can believe. That war with the US Canada wins, hands down.

"This visit was different. Like no other in all the winters Chief Inspector Gamache had been coming to Quebec City. This time it was Gamache who needed help.”There are several story lines in this disquieting novel. Two are in the immediate past, the third is in the present. The elements of each are interwoven into one remarkable narrative. One involves a recent case gone bad as the Surete attempt to rescue a kidnaped officer. One involves a murder case in Three Pines where the Chief Inspector is, months later, questioning whether he got the right man. The third takes place in old Quebec City where a dead man has been found in the sub-basement of the Literary and Historical Society Library. Worried that centuries old grudges between the French and the Anglos may be re-ignited, the local police chief has sought Gamache’s assistance in the investigation. “...while forgetting the past might condemn people to repeat it, remembering it too vividly condemned them to never leave.”Past and present come together in this outstanding novel as Gamache and his assistant, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, are shocked and horrified when they are forced to view the past in a very vivid and disturbing manner.Bury Your Dead is book 6 in Louise Penny's mystery series. It is “paired” with book 5 and definitely should be read in sequence. All of the books in this series are well-written, the characters beautifully developed. A delightful series with plenty of twists and turns. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ From the author: “Like the rest of the Chief Inspector Gamache books, Bury Your Dead is not about death, but about life. And the need to both respect the past and let it go.”

This is book 6 in the murder series, mainly set in Quebec Province Canada. Once again the novel follows the exploits of Armand Gamache and his deputy Jean-Guy Beauvoir. This time they are working on different investigations.Following a harrowing shooting, Gamache is recovering in Quebec City where he's drawn into the case of a dead body found in the basement of a little-used library. As he's on medical leave, he's asked to help the investigation in an unofficial capacity.Meanwhile Beauvoir is back in the village of Three Pines, ostensibly covering from injuries sustained during the same traumatic ambush as Gamache who has asked him to re-examine the case of a murdered hermit. A much beloved member of the community is currently in prison for this crime.This story wasn't an easy read, partly due to changing timelines and locations but mainly due to the raw grief and guilt felt by Gamache. There's lot of interesting historical detail about the early days of Quebec City - enjoyable for anyone who has visited this quaint city. Penny as usual has written the novel using beautiful prose and fascinating descriptions. The ever present back story about the inner workings within the Sûreté continue to build.I highly recommend the book and it's best enjoyed if it's read in order so as you can appreciate the development of characters and the plot.

All of Louise Penny’s mysteries are excellent, full of deep psychological insights and interesting, often beloved characters. This one is exceptional, however, in that it manages to alternate among four different stories—three contemporary and one historical—without being either confusing or frustrating, something few authors can manage. Penny chose change-over points that felt like natural breaks, so that it wasn’t painful to set aside one fascinating tale in order to pick up another, equally interesting one.I always recommend reading series in order, so that one can get to know the continuing characters and watch them develop, but in this case it’s particularly important to have read the previous book in Penny’s Inspector Gamache series, The Brutal Telling, before reading this one because one and a half of the stories in the present book grow out of it. The first of these continues the question of who killed the “Hermit” in the forest cabin near Penny’s Brigadoon-like Quebecois village, Three Pines; one of the regular Three Pines characters, bistro owner Olivier, was convicted of the crime at the end of the last book, but Olivier’s devoted partner, Gabri—probably along with a lot of readers—refuses to accept his guilt, so Gamache sends his second-in-command, Beauvoir, to Three Pines to reexamine the case while Gamache is busy elsewhere. The “half” involves appealing young agent Paul Morin, who was introduced in the earlier book; the peril in which Morin (along with Gamache and Beauvoir) finds himself in this story (told in flashbacks) does not grow out of that book, but readers who have read it will care more deeply about what happens to him.The other two mysteries, one present-day and one historical, center on the oldest parts of Quebec City, the capital of that mostly French-speaking Canadian province. They are Gamache’s, and the book’s, main focus. Penny’s rich descriptions of the Old City make me want to see it for myself someday, and she makes the Canadian history it embodies both clear and fascinating even to those of us whose previous knowledge of it came from dimly remembered social-studies texts. The old and new stories both involve the question of what happened to the body of Samuel de Champlain, the province’s founder, who is to the Quebecois what, say, George Washington is to people in the United States. The book also gives interesting information about the key 1759 battle between the French and the English, fought nearby, that shaped the fate of the province and, indeed, the country. It is a story that resonates with Gamache because both the French and the English generals made important mistakes, just as he feels he did in the terrorist case involving Paul Morin. Echoes of the battle also can still be felt in the still-strained relations between the French-speakers and the English-speakers (now a somewhat embattled minority) in the city, which play a major part in the contemporary mystery.Penny’s writing, whether describing people or places, is wonderful throughout. This book is not the best place to start on her series, but for those who already have some acquaintance with Gamache, his fellow police officers, and the denizens of Three Pines, I can’t recommend it enough.

It is a fact that no one knows where Samuel de Champlain, the founder of Quebec and Canada, is buried. No one really knows what he looked like. But as the founder of the first colony in Canada (or New France), Champlain has remained a powerful figure in Canadian politics, and Quebec separatism.And it is these facts about Champlain that form the heart of Louise Penny’s “Bury Your Dead,” the sixth Chief Inspector Armand Gamache mystery.I’m not sure how Penny does it, but each of these Gamache mysteries is better than the one before it. Bury Your Dead is downright dazzling; Penny tells the story of four mysteries simultaneously and successfully pulls it off.The Literary and Historical Society of Quebec is something of an anomaly. It is a library and historical society, but it is an Anglo society in the heart of Old Quebec. Its board is mostly older men and women, and the library is generally a quiet place, deliberately maintaining something of a low profile.The body of an amateur archaeologist is found in the society’s dirt-floor basement. He’s been bludgeoned with a shovel. This particular archaeologist had a mania for finding the burial place of Champlain, and has had a reputation for some spectacular failures.Champlain is one mystery; the murder is the second. The third is what Chief Inspector Gamache of the Quebec Surete is doing, spending time with his old boss. And it isn’t a simple friendly visit. Gamache is recovering from a police operation that went very badly. During a rutine traffic stop, a policeman had been killed and a young officer, one of Gamache’s own, taken prisoner. And all we know at the beginning is that Gamache is recovering, including from his own physical wounds.Gamache’s right-0hand man, Detective Jean-Guy Bouvier, is also recovering from his physical wounds. He is in the village of Three Pines, sent there by Gamache, to see if they arrested the wrong man for murder, the story of “The Brutal Telling.” The man was convicted and sent to prison. But Gamache knows the mistakes he made with the police operation, and he knows a mistake may have been made in Three Pines.Four mysteries in all – where Champlain is buried; the murder in the society’s basement; the police operation gone badly; and the case in Three Pines. Not all are connected, and Penny masterfully unfolds and weaves together each of them. It’s history, mystery, police procedure, and the uncovering of human emotions and passions all rolled into one overall story.And it’s an excellent read.

Authors can speak to you on different levels. Louise Penny is a storyteller who is able to manage multiple story lines within one novel. This book has three plot lines that include a terrorist attack, multiple murders, and a healthy dose of Canadian history. Ms. Penny can be described as a painterly author; her descriptions of people and places are so vivid that the reader can see clearly through her verbal renderings.Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his second-in-command Jean-Guy Beauvoir are recuperating from wounds they sustained during a terrorist attack gone wrong. Gamache goes to Quebec City to recuperate and to visit with his mentor and former chief. There he becomes involved in a murder that rocks the English community in this French city. Augustin Renaud, considered a lunatic by many in Quebec City, has only one thing on his mind—finding the body of Samuel de Champlain, founder of Quebec, missing for 400 years. And now Renaud is dead, his body poorly buried under the Literary and Historical Society, a hushed library barely known, rarely visited.Gamache has sent Jean-Guy to Three Pines, a bucolic-appearing village that roils with undertones, to reconsider whether the police got a previous murder conviction right. Jean-Guy thought the people of Three Pines were “cunning, deceitful, arrogant, and nearly incomprehensible, especially the Anglos. They were dangerous because they hid their thoughts, hid their feelings, behind a smiling face. Who could tell what was really going on in their heads? They said one thing and thought another. Who knew what rancid thing lived, curled up, in that space between words and thoughts?”Recurring flashbacks to the terrorist attack that wounded Gamache and Beauvoir both mentally and physically plague them as they go about their investigations. Penny deftly interweaves these horrific memories into the story—so well, in fact, that the reader feel all the anguish of the two men right along with them.The temperature in Florida today as I write “feels like” 100+ degrees, and the humidity is so thick that it slaps you in the face as you open the door. What a delight to travel to Quebec City in December with Gamache: “. . .he marveled at the beauty as the first light hit the new snow. It looked more pale blue than white, and here and there it sparkled like tiny prisms where the flakes had drifted and collected, then caught, remade, and returned to light. Like something alive and giddy.”Penny describes the effects of the cold so well that I could feel the chill. As the book progresses, the cold becomes so pervasive a part of the story that it actually almost becomes a character itself. “He sat and put his hands to his face, feeling the burning. Extreme cold left its ironic mark. It was indistinguishable from a sunburn. But within minutes it had subsided, and the circulation had returned to his hands, helped along by sitting on them.” This is a cool August treat that is much better than a beach read!

This is the second of the Chief Inspector Gamache novels I've read, having started with How the Light Gets In. Suffice to say that no matter where one starts in the series, readers who love beautifully drawn characters and plots that are imaginative and complex (but never resort to gobsmacking "gotcha" trickery) will devour Louise Penny's books.Bury the Dead is, in fact, three mysteries at once -- each in the end connected directly or in other ways both heartbreaking and fascinating. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, in Quebec City to visit an old friend and mentor (and to heal from the psychological scars of the terrible price he and his team paid to foil an act of domestic terrorism) finds himself drawn into the mystery of the murder of Augustin Renaud. Renaud, a local fixture whose obsession with finding the missing remains of Samuel de Champlain has aggravated nearly everyone -- both English and French Quebecois -- is found with his skull crushed in the basement of the Literary and Historical Society, a musty repository of artifacts of the English heritage in Quebec. The question of what Renaud was doing seems clear: looking for Champlain; it's what he was always doing. But why in the basement of the Lit and His? And why was he murdered, and by whom? Meanwhile, in Three Pines, Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir -- Gamache's senior team member -- has reopened the Surete's investigation into the death of a local eccentric known as the Hermit, for which bistro owner Olivier has been convicted on the basis of seemingly incontrovertible evidence. But if Olivier didn't commit the crime, who is the real killer? Looming over all is the mystery of the never-found final resting place of Champlain.By turns mournful, and wickedly funny, Bury Your Dead is a masterful mystery by a gifted writer working at the top of her form. Gamache is a remarkable creation, finely drawn and fully realized -- the kind of mentor, boss and man we wish we knew or could be, and we come to care about him deeply Though of necessity drawn in broader strokes, the supporting characters are all memorable.Be warned: once you've read the first few pages you aren't likely to stop until you've read to the very end. Bury Your Dead is simply one of the best novels I've read in many years.

This is a mystery, and I want to communicate why this book is special while being careful not to give anything away. I have read hundreds of mysteries, and I have never read one so intricately put together. Louise Penny manages to interweave three story lines, actually four mysteries because the motive for one crime lies in a mystery in the founding and history of Quebec City. Moreover, Penny creates parallels among these story lines--for example, the title Bury Your Dead relates to the importance of burials or the placement of bodes in each story.At the very beginning of the book, the reader is introduced to a tragic incident months earlier from which Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his second-in-command Jean-Guy Beauvoir are still recovering. Their recoveries proceed separately but in parallel; the reader learns this tragic story gradually as they ruminate about it and begin to share it with others they trust. They become more themselves after they become invested in two other crimes that they separately investigate. Beauvoir's investigation follows up on the previous novel, The Brutal Telling, and brings in the familiar characters from Three Pines. Gamache's investigation introduces his mentor Emile Comeau as a character as well as bringing in the interesting history of the province and city of Quebec. The tension between French and English cultures, apparent in previous installments of the Gamache mysteries, takes center stage in this story line.This book will be much more meaningful to readers who already know the main characters. Jean-Guy Beauvoir becomes a more sympathetic character in this book, and Armand Gamache a more complex one because he is no longer perfect--he has been weakened by events, distrusts his judgment, and has to learn to accept his mistakes. If you don't care about these two characters and about the disruption to life in Three Pines that occurred in The Brutal Telling, the intricately interwoven story lines of Bury Your Dead might seem tedious rather than compelling. I don't agree with reviewers who stated that one has to read The Brutal Telling before this novel, but one does have to know something of the characters and their previous interactions, and care about them.Penny has created an impressive number of engaging continuing characters, from Gamache and his wonderful wife and his loyal and imperfect colleagues to the quirky and imperfect residents of Three Pines, as well as the interesting characters who become important in each particular novel. Being able to combine such wonderful characters with extremely well-crafted plots makes Louise Penny an impressive writer in the genre of cozy mysteries/police procedurals. I know I will read all of her novels in this series. My only disappointment in this novel is that her description did not make clear one aspect of what happened in the tragic event that begins and ends the book (even after I went back and forth between passages). Otherwise, this is a five-star mystery.

I should admit, upfront that I am not really a reader of detective stories and, anyway, there are enough reviews here that discuss Louise Penny's skill as a writer of this genre in all its facets. It was also my first encounter of Penny's delightful, pondering Armand Gamache. I enjoyed BURY YOUR DEAD for reasons that, mostly, may not fall within the usual framework. I was in Quebec City while reading this story and with time on my hands. So I followed Gamache's walks from the Chateau Frontenac and the Promenade, overlooking the St. Laurence River, to the narrow alleys that reveal what used to be the Anglophone section of Old Quebec... It was a delight: the author's descriptions give you more than the landmarks, a lot more. These are interesting enough and the book is one of the best guides of that part of Old Quebec you can find, with a good introduction into its local history, and recommended cafes and much more. I drank coffee in one and pondered dinner in another. But back to the story at the centre of the events.The case that Gamache is asked to involve himself with - inofficially as he is on leave to recover from the dramas of a recent case that didn't go the way the experienced detective had imagined it should. Somebody has been murdered in the basement archives of the English Literary Society, a venerable institution established in the 1830s. The Anglo community is nervous about the circumstances of the death in their building that is not publicly accessible and about the person who was murdered... the plot thickens and even if you can guess who is behind the crime, the revelation is done in a circuitous and interesting way. History, going back to the Founding Father of Quebec, is at the centre of it all. Well done!Those readers familiar with Armand Gamache will know how much he enjoys his coffee, food and drink at the right time as much as a good conversation that reaches far beyond the case at hand, any previous case not quite concluded, and into philosophy, religion and, of course, history. For me, wandering around Old Quebec, this book will keep a special place and Armand will have enough of a pull to try another one of Penny's stories. [Friederike Knabe]