The Beautiful Mystery

I enjoyed this one a lot during the final hundred and fifty pages. I missed our dear friends in Three Pines but also loved the setting of this one.

I have enjoyed all seven in the series, but this one captured me on so many levels. The extensive research needed to present this book is obvious. As a lifelong Catholic, I was amazed at the many details I didn't know about the history of monasteries and the monks who keep them alive for so long.Kudos to Louise Penny for her wonderful writing.

I thought the book moved slowly. I had trouble picking up where I left off. It was a lot of the same, kinda boring. I enjoyed hearing about the plainchant. Is there really such a thing as plainchant?

I had some trouble with this one. I went from thinking of giving it up halfway because I was afraid of the outcome. Then i would try to rush through some chapters to see what was going to happen. I would stop for a while, then I would get up my courage and keep going. This happened a few times. Even kept me awake one night worrying about what would hapoen. The end was so much worse than anything I imagined. At the end I was sad and mad! I am glad I followed it through, but hope that things will get better in the next book or two. I almost gave up the whole series.It was very well written as all these books are. I learned a bit about Gregorian Chant and even listened to a few from the Benedictines. I never knew exactly what it was and thanks to the excellent research in this book, i know some history. The books are fiction, but the author does amazing research into the historical details. It really lures the reader in and one gets to know the characters so well. Its like you want to step in and help.I am carefully moving on to the next book in the series hoping that there is a good outcome for the characters. This book was not set in Three Pines and the quirky folks from Three Pines were not in this book at all. I missed them. Hope they are back in the next book!Thanks for the good read....(I think)

I am a huge fan of the Armand Gamache series, but I prefer the ones set in three Pines. The Beautiful Mystery begins by delving deeper into the lives of Gamache, Beauvoir, and Armand’s daughter, Annie. I like when the over arching storyline continues to move forward in each installment.The setting of The Beautiful Mystery is absolutely breathtaking. I love the solitude and isolation of the small wooded island. I loved the juxtaposition of the head of the Sûreté and the head of the abbey. Just when you think the tension is at its breaking point, the hound of the Lord shows up!Things really take off from there. There are many themes that are explored, including finding healing/peace, accepting our human weakness, escaping or dealing with the past, division among followers, and the power of silence. The Beautiful Mystery ponders, “the Divine, the human, and the cracks in between.”I am a lover of all music and have listened to Gregorian Chants throughout my life, so I enjoyed this aspect of the book. I greatly enjoyed Umberto Echo’s The Name of the Rose, so I greatly enjoyed a murder mystery set Inside the closed walls of a religious order. If that type of story appeals to you, or a good “everyone’s a suspect” in a locked room mystery (my favorite is the movie Clue), I highly recommend this book.

The Beautiful Mystery is set in an isolated abbey in the far north of Quebec, where the prior has been murdered in the Abbott's private garden. Chief Inspector Gamache and Inspector Beauvoir arrive to investigate among an order of twenty-four Monks--now only twenty-three--who have chosen to dedicate their lives to God and to music. Their music of choice, and in fact their raison d'etre, is Gregorian Chant. Their order, the Gilbertines, have been hidden away for centuries after fleeing Europe and the Vatican during the Inquisition.The good news is that Gamache and Beauvoir have a finite group of twenty-three monks as suspects, and they're all cloistered in the abbey. There's nowhere to run. The bad news is that the monks are a divided group, with two factions emerging. One faction favored the murdered prior, and his efforts to capitalize on their music, while modernizing their lives. The other faction favors the Abbott's efforts to resist change and protect what he perceives as their history and their vows.As is the case with all of Louise Penny's stories, there are lots of interesting characters to come alive on the pages. Since this novel is not set in Montreal or Three Pines, as most have been, more of the characters, and all of the suspects, are new.As is also the case with Penny's novels, there are intertwining storylines wrapped around common themes. In The Beautiful Mystery, the themes are group interactions, loyalty, and betrayal. Some of them will be resolved, but some will quite obviously continue into the next Gamache story, and the next.

After I read the the 5th book in the series I thought I would not read another Louise Penny book. They were too gothic for me and I felt unrealistic and contrived. That was probably five years ago.My new book club chose this book for this month--January. Okay, I had to read it, but wasn't looking forward to it. it is certainly dull at the beginning and when the author had way too many people getting into an aluminum fishing boat I wanted to quit. However, I gave it more time and I am glad I did. The story is very unusual. Probably not realistic at all, but I found the setting and the people very interesting. I am not going to read another Louise Penny book any time soon unless I have to. I don't like the dark tone of her books or what is happening between Gamache and his subordinate. I happened to like this one.

I really enjoyed the premise of the mystery in this book --- a group of monks in a secluded monastery of northern Quebec are divided on how they should express their love of God and their God-given musical gifts. It was very believable and Gamache went about his investigation in his usual quiet, intentional way. Some people say this book moved too slowly. I can understand that observation, but a lot of detective novels feel slow-paced to me, which can certainly seem tedious.It has been a while since I read a Louise Penny book -- I think the last one was the raid on the factory, in which lives were lost. Gamache carries a lot of self-blame. His right-hand man, Jean-Guy, who is conducting a secret relationship with Gamache's daughter Annie, is painted in this book as a bit of a self-absorbed turd. He is recovering from a narcotics addiction (pain killers from injuries sustained in the factory raid) and is very impatient with the contemplative, spiritual orientation of the monks. I got irritated with him in short order. When a character devolves in this way, it's very often an indication that the author is planning to dispose of the character as the story unfolds. While Jean-Guy is not completely disposed of, he gets thrown under the bus due largely to his own weaknesses. As for Sylvain Francoeur, the interfering (& evil) admin from La Surete, well, I hope some future book details his grisly demise.

At first I was disappointed to find that this book did not take place in Three Pines but, as it progressed, I found myself nonetheless engrossed in the story. The murder of a monk took place in a remote monastery in backwoods Quebec where the Order took a vow of silence. Gamache and Beauvoir stayed at the monastery while trying to solve the crime and early in their work, Gamache's superior, Francoeur appears from out of the sky in a floatplane. This book reintroduces the Arnot case and rehashes the trauma of the factory shoot-out in which both Gamache and Beauvoir were seriously wounded. It gives us a hint of the politics and evil at work behind the scenes at the Surete. I don't want to discuss the plot too deeply so as not to spoil it for other readers but this book was a springboard for the next in the series, How the Light Gets In, which I bought immediately upon completing this one.I want readers to know that even though the setting was not Three Pines, the book was very good and worth the read. It continues the story of Gamache, et al and allows us to see into the heart of this brilliant, good man. Also, Beauvoir's struggle in this book is very realistic and portrayed with a great deal of kindness and understanding for his problem.

First of all, it must be said that one should read the Chief Inspector Gamache series in the order written, since a storyline flows through all the novels, linking plots and characters together, into a long, thoughtful tale of light and dark; love and hate; crime and punishment; and good and evil.But, once again in this book, Louise Penny delivers a very well-written mystery that takes a definite detour from her usual cast of quirky and earnest characters that habituate Three Pines, that hidden but deadly village, deep in the Quebec wilderness.However, in this crime-riddled tale, Gamache and Beauvoir are sent to a monastery, deep in the forest, a fortress of solitude and musical beauty, in the form of recently famous, Gregorian chants, the life ocus of the friars and their leaders. One of the holy men is found dead, in the abbot's garden. Up to the day of the killing, all has gone well, behind the thick walls of the sanctuary that houses and protects 25 monks, until one of them is murdered.Within hours, the Quebec Surete is summoned to catch the holy killer. Hence, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir disembark at the dock of the monastery. From the first moments behind the thick, high walls, both men are in new territory. They brothers and their abbot are not the usual ilk that appear to resort to murder. But one of them is guilty.As the police investigation process unfolds, both the chief inspector and his second in command are caught up in a labyrinth of Gregorian chants, corridors, a chapel, cloisters and cells that confuse and distract their progress. In the midst of the investigation, the head of the Surete, arrives to further salt the physical and psychological wounds that both inspectors suffered, in a previous novel, when Gamache and his team enter into a trap and several officers are killed or wounded. This distraction to the solving of the death of the dead friar puts both Gamache and Beauvoir at odds with one another and the entire Surete, not to mention their focus on the finding the monk's killer.Then enters a visitor, fresh from the Vatican. His arrival further complicates the investigation. In the end and with the help of the Holy See's representative, a unique perspective on the cloistered brothers and their wilderness fortress is revealed and the murderer is exposed. Gamache, in his usual thoughtful but focused style, then hurries off to tend to further pressures on his private and professional life. As always, Ms. Penny gives her readers a wee hint into what the next crime scene might be, a least a clue that all is not all well with the Surete.Besides revisiting the wonderful characters and setting of this series of murder mysteries, Louise Penny delivers wonderful language; weaves philosophical truths; and entices the reader to fall in love with her characters and prose. Ms. Penney is a superb crime novelist.

The Beautiful Mystery, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #8, was the best so far! I finished it last night and cannot stop thinking about it! And Three Pines is not in it at all! All the action takes place in a secluded monastery, Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, in the deep wilderness of Quebec. It pulled me in from the first paragraph and still hasn't let me go. The mystery is a whodunit, but the story is so much more. It is about love and hate, and the old Gregorian Chants, and music, and faith. I was actually crying in places. Here is a tiny story, about how the sect got its name: (It's not a spoiler)"Do you know why our emblem is two wolves intertwined?" Gamache shook his head...."One of the (native) elders told him that when he was a boy his grandfather came to him and told him he had two wolves fighting inside him. One was grey, the other black. The grey one wanted his grandfather to be courageous, and patient, and kind. The other, the black one, wanted his grandfather to be fearful and cruel. This upset the boy, and he thought about it for a few days and returned to his grandfather. He asked, 'Grandfather, which of the wolves will win?' Do you know what his grandfather said?" Gamache shook his head. There was such a look of sadness on the Chief Inspector's face, it almost broke the abbot's heart. "The one I feed."Hmmmm. You had to have been there. Reading and in the book, with the Chief Inspector. There are not enough superlatives to describe Louise Penny's talent. This is only the eighth in the series. Every one of my reviews describes how great she is, and how the characters in these stories get inside the reader. I don't care about any creative license with the way monasteries are run. It was wonderful. Please, if you decide to begin the series, start at #1. You won't be sorry.

Several of the Chief Inspector Gamache books deal with art; in contrast, The Beautiful Mystery focuses on the spiritual/emotional consequences of music, specifically Gregorian chants. As in A Rule Against Murder, Louise Penny locates the crime in an isolated place, reducing the number of continuing characters who come into play. This police procedural picks up soon after A Trick of the Light; it is set in a monastery that has hidden itself from the outside world and focuses intensely on the relationship of Armand Gamache and his second-in-command Jean-Guy Beauvoir. Although the backstory is described, this book will be more meaningful to those who have read previous installments in the series.Some reviewers have criticized Penny's choice of setting, but I found it perfect for the soul-searching (almost literally) that Gamache and, especially, Beauvoir continue after the tragic incident that occurred in Bury Your Dead. An earlier incident in which Gamache went against his superiors and earned their enmity contributes to the angst that builds in this novel after Gamache's boss and enemy, Chief Superintendent Francoeur, unexpectedly arrives at the monastery midway through the book. For me, the first half of the book was optimistic, with Beauvoir appearing to have shaken off his demons and started on a path to happiness. In keeping with the lighter mood, Penny mentions the light many times in this half of the book. The parallels she draws between Gamache and Beauvoir emphasize the complementarity of their styles and even have them both texting the women they love at the same time. In this half, the plot specific to this book holds its own.The second half of the book is darker and becomes quite ominous, and the series-plot seems in the foreground. The "beautiful mystery" involving the chants and the mystery of which brother in the small monastery was motivated to commit murder both are solved. But Gamache and Beauvoir become mired in other muck from the past that will carry over to later novels. Adept at pulling in literary references, Penny begins the darker half of the book with both Gamache and Beauvoir thinking "something (is) coming" as Francoeur arrives--and Gamache repeatedly mentions the quote from T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, "Some malady is coming upon us." Fear and lies make many appearances in this book. Rage has several devastating effects. In earlier books, Penny has described the allegorical dark, locked room which Gamache is willing to enter in order to expose a murderer but which other characters (e.g., Peter Morrow and Beauvoir) are afraid to unlock lest they release they own beasts. She makes use of that concept in this book, but extends the idea of a private place within each of us to include the secret, locked garden where the murder occurs. Some readers might find this book short on action, but I found the second half to be a pretty epic struggle of good versus evil over a soul. (No light sabers, but think Darth Vader trying to pull Luke Skywalker to the Dark Side and Obi-Wan defending.)As usual Penny's characters are masterfully drawn, interesting and nuanced. Although the murder weapon was obvious to me early on, there were many likely murder suspects until the end, and Penny manages to make them credible suspects while slowly becoming likeable as more is known about them. The isolation of the monastery and the monk's devotion to music above all else prompts the reader to consider what is important in life. Gamache, who is spiritual but not conventionally religious, finds the music moving and calming. Even the impatient, skeptical Beauvoir comes to like the monks and finds peace at one point in the beautiful music. Penny creates urgency in their departure from the monastery and poses the killer's confession and the critical denouement between Gamache and Beauvoir as occurring simultaneously. These qualities make the novel very engaging. Other reviewers have critiqued the accuracy of Penny's handling of monastery life and Catholicism as well as the credibility of the changes in Beauvoir's behavior in the end of the book. Those flaws keep it from being a five-star book for me.

I am surprised at the people who have said they read all the other books and don't like the ending to this one, don't like the continued conflict between Gamache and his superior officer and the continued re-playing of the factory event and don't like what is happening to Jean-Guy. I have read most of these books even though when I get to the end of each of them I tend to think, "oh, come on!" The strength of these books IS NOT the who and how of the murder, and it sure isn't the gathering of people in one place to reveal the murderer. Some of these murders, especially in the earlier books, seem ridiculously complicated. These murderers must be brilliant, capable of perfect timing, and the luckiest people on earth. But I like the books because of the way Penny builds her stories. The strength of the books is the atmosphere she evokes, the relationships she develops between characters, the maturing of characters from book to book, and the way she explores the battle between good and evil (or as more often expressed, dark and light) using her central character, the very appealing Chief Inspector Gamache. Jean-Guy has been a work in progress throughout this series, and while his most appealing trait has been his loyalty to the Chief, it has not always been absolute. Jean-Guy has never understood Gamache although he thinks he does. He's in pain, sick and vulnerable. I didn't find the ending so surprising, although it is sad. This character grows, and not always for the better. (And when oh when is Peter Morrow going to stop lying and become a good husband?) The factory event won't play out quickly just as it wouldn't had it happened to real people. I am more interested in what happens to Gamache than I am in the solutions to these murders. I want to read on because I know Jean-Guy will heal and find his way back. (I do think it's odd that there would be a monastic order completely unknown to Rome, given that when the monk dies the abbot calls his archbishop. So he has one. But a little suspension of disbelief goes with all of these books.) I wish there wasn't such an anti-church message running throughout the series and this book in particular, but everyone has a different experience with the churches of their childhood and that goes well beyond the scope of a book review.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the author's work -- having discovered her in June, I have had a great summer working through her books and eagerly await the next one.The Beautiful Mystery suffers from Louise Penny's unfamiliarity with what she is writing about. She makes it clear that Quebec today is a secular, post-Christian culture; but she should have run her book by someone familiar with Catholicism, and monasticism.It's simply not believable that a community of monks fleeing Europe disappeared into the woods of Quebec and sustained monastic life for four hundred years without the Church being aware of them. We're asked to believe that the Holy See never stopped searching even for a day, but only discovered where these monks were when their chant CD was released.Simply impossible. A monastery has relations with its local Bishop (although it has independence from him) and a Visitor, an Abbot from another Abbey who checks in every three years or so. How did these guys get their Priests ordained over those four hundred years? If the Abbot was regularly going out to recruit (and pilfer!) new monks from other monasteries, plenty of people in the Church had to know about these guys.The monks puzzle over the last words of the dying monk, deciding that they were "Ecce homo." The Abbot tells the Inspector that this means, 'He is Man," which is untrue. The words are famous; Pilate, having had Christ scourged and tortured, shows Him to the crowd, saying, 'Behold the Man."The Inspector asks why he said that; the Abbot tells him, 'He wanted to prove to the crowd that their god wasn't divine at all; that Jesus was just a man." Um, unless the monks in Quebec are as ignorant of the faith as everyone else, this is inexplicable. It's Biblical illiteracy. Pilate was addressing the bloodthirsty crowd who were screaming for Christ's death, thinking that if they saw He'd been punished they'd relent. The crowd didn't think Jesus was divine; they were the henchmen of the chief priests, assembled under cover of night for a show trial.Much of the plot revolves around the monks' "vow of silence." There's no such thing. Monks take three vows: obedience, stability, conversion of manners. There is no vow of silence. Having taken their vows, the monks then live in common and live the Rule of the house, which involves stated times of quiet.But this is where I most regret the shortcomings of the book. Much of its effect is from the contrast between two world, which the detectives experience powerfully. It's like the Harrison Ford film 'Witness" -- contrasting the Amish world with that of Philadelphia police.A Monastery is not a completely other world. It is a family. In any home there should be someone making decisions, someone procuring food, division of chores, provision for the care of the weak and elderly, and, yes, silent times ("Dad got home from work at 4AM so QUIET this morning!!!"). A monastery is no different: How do we all live together here, at peace, fruitfully, supporting each other, givng each other space and needed privacy? Whether the household is five people or seventy, it is the same question.Louise Penny clearly knows, for example, to immerse herself in AA lore before writing a novel involving it. I wish she had done the same for monasteries. Monastic life is a fascinating contrast -- not an other-worldly experience -- to ordinary lives people lead, illuminating by similarity and difference. I enjoyed the book, but there were many jarring, unreal notes struck. That being said, what a GREAT summer Ms Penny's books gave me. I look forward to "That's How the Light Gets in!!"

A murder in an isolated monastery deep in the woods of Quebec? 24 monks committed to a vow of silence and praising God with their voices in Gregorian chants have a murderer in their midst. The choir master is found murdered. Why? By whom? Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir arrive in a fishing boat with their Crime Scene equipment and begin the task of being admitted to a monastery where no outsider has ever gone. What will they find? A beautiful old cathedral in the heart of a cross-shaped fortress filled with shimmering lights and silence. As they uncover the facts of the murder, they find monks who are just as human as any man on the street, only , as Christians say, they are "forgiven". Each man has been chosen for attributes of character, training, expertise in a vocation and a beautiful signing voice to augment the needs of the choir which has become world-known after the release of a CD of their chants. It brings the monastery fame and money and unwelcome visitors from outside. The abbot must lead his flock according to God's plan, not the plans of the choir master. Thus, a rift begins, unspoken in the silence, but flamed by the flick of an eyebrow, the clearing of a throat, a cough, a less than respectful smile. How can twenty-four men convey so much feeling and emotion without a word? This is the story, but the underlying, and I think more important story, is Gamache and Beauvoir, still struggling with the violence of the shoot out a year ago that left both of them clinging to life. Gamache has recovered sufficiently, but what about Beauvoir? Both men are subjected to the healing power of the word of God as it is sung to them several times a day as the monks go though their worship and work. "The beautiful mystery" (as the plainchants are called that bring peace and comfort to all who hear) ministers to Gamache and brings him peace and calm. Beauvoir resists the hymns at first but also becomes drawn into their peace until an evil opponent, Superintendent Francouer, arrives. Why has he come? Gamache is brought into a series of confrontations with the man that push him to the limits of his self-control and he struggles to keep his soul and not strike out. Beauvoir also tries to challange the strong, manipulative boss of the Surete and finds an opponent who has no limits and who will use every tool at his disposal to destroy both him and his beloved boss, Gamache. Who is going to survive this battle within a murder investigation? If you are someone who expects the good guy to win every time, be prepared for a shock on this one. I recommend it highly to all who are Louise Penney fans. As to any negative reviews, a writer cannot please every reader, but only reach those who are in tune with their own feelings and experiences. Writers always write from their stand point. Others may not like that.

I have read all of Louise Penny's books and eagerly awaited the release of "The Beautiful Mystery." It combines the writing of a favorite author with a subject of deep fascination to me: monasticism. I was let down on both these levels.If I were going to write a book that delved deeply into, say, airline operations, I would spend a great amount of time beforehand talking to pilots, agents, flight attendants, anybody that was an insider to my subject. There is too much that isn't apparent, too much technical data and special language that needs to be learned. I don't see where Ms. Penny did this work. TBM, for the most part, is her imagination of what life in a monastery must be like. I understand that they are often cloistered and not open to many women, but this has been worked around by others.The whole atmosphere of this monastery rings untrue. Men don't join monasteries for "the chants," as she calls them, but for a deep religious motive. Believe or not, a postulant will not last long without this. Nobody joins such a rigorous life for the music. Certainly it is beautiful but no mystery: they've been doing it very well for hundreds of years and I don't recall where it has ever caught on in the popular market to the extent that big money is involved (the Singing Nun, notwithstanding.) Most monasteries barely get by with their commercial endeavors, including wine, whiskey, bread and music.And no monk would ever eat all the blueberries he just picked without confessing this to his brothers the next day in General Chapter! Any new monk like Luc, already a priest or not, would be segregated into a sort of school setting in which he would study, for years, theology, the rules of his order and everything else a monk needs to know. He would never be isolated to gate duty and left on his own. Pride is discouraged in a monastic setting: you don't show off what you can do well, you try to learn that at which you often fail.The book is full of errors any new monk would correct out of kindness. First, there is NO "vow of silence" in a monastery about which so much is written! Monks, like the Trappists with which I am most familiar, take five vows: poverty, chastity, obedience, stability and conversion of manners. Vows cannot be dismissed by an abbot. They are similar to the vow of marriage which includes, "What God has joined together, let no man put asunder." Silence is a rule of the order, a simple discipline that has no morality attached to it. It is merely a way for the group to live more peacefully. This rule has much changed over the years to meet a monastery's needs.Abbots don't go from monastery to monastery seeking out potential players; it isn't the NFL! The vow of stability I mentioned above discourages this: a monk is supposed to remain with his monastery for life. This vow is tempered with the vow of obedience so that sometimes a monk is sent, for example, to help open a new foundation. But no monk has ever switched religious orders because the music was better!A monastery couldn't exist in secret, as this one seems to. They are under the care of the local bishop and Rome certainly knows where those folks are. A bishop is needed for ordination to the priesthood. How is the commercial aspect of a monastery carried out if nobody knows (including Rome!) that they are there? How do you make money on spoilable chocolate-covered blueberries in the heart of Quebec woods?And a word about "monks." Monks are mostly cloistered and live in monasteries. The Dominican is NOT a monk but a friar, a mendicant. They have different lifestyles entirely. It was said of the Dominican that he was "a monk, not a priest," as if that were a status symbol. Priests are ordained monks and every monastery has a number of them. The prior, for example, would be a priest-monk.The choir monks don't gather around the altar, they occupy choir stalls, long sideways pews with shelves to hold their psalters and other books. They are on either side of the main aisle and two groups of monks therefore face each other during mass and the chanting of the Divine Office. Mass isn't said normally at 11 o'clock for the simple reason that the monks fast until after mass. The main chapel is not called "The Blessed Chapel," but the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, as that is where the consecrated hosts dwell.No cleric would ever interrupt a mass as the Dominican did, never mind the result. This scene, so important in the conclusion, is just preposterous. And no abbot would leave choir, in the middle of service, to answer the door, nor would the others follow him! There just seems to be no actual monastic experience anywhere and the story wouldn't have suffered if it had been more accurate. There are some very good stories within cloisters written by people who have taken the time to understand the setting.Ms. Penny could also use some help with her Latin. She uses two of the most common phrases and gets them wrong. "Dies irae, dies illa" does NOT mean "day ...