April is known as the cruelest month, not just here in the States but also in Three Pines, a tiny town near Quebec. The month is especially cruel for Madeleine, who dies unexpectedly during an impromptu seance in the old Hadley House. But as April showers bring May flowers, a death in Three Pines brings Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team from the Surete du Quebec.
Inspector Gamache is an old-school detective, using simple observation and human relationships alongside the more modern scientific techniques. He believes in looking people in the eyes, old-fashioned shoe-leather detecting, and long hours of hard work to catch a killer. It is his dedication to finding the truth, to searching out the evil to protect the good, that drives him as a policeman and as a man. His team balances him well, from Jean-Guy Beauvoir's strength to Isabelle Lacoste's quiet intelligence. And Gamache will depend on the entirety of his team to solve the murder, there is trouble brewing for him back in Surete headquarters that even his dream team may not be able to help him overcome.
Anyone who has visited Louise Penny's captivating corner of Canada know that while the murder can draw you into the story, you stay for the characters. The residents of Three Pines are so completely imagined that they feel like friends. From the innkeepers Olivier and Gabri to bookstore owner Myrna and artists Clara and Peter Morrow, and (of course) resident poet and all-around crank Ruth, the true genius of Louise Penny and her Detective Gamache series is in creating a place where we as readers want to spend as much of our spare time as possible.
The Cruelest Month is book 3 in the series, and I can't stop recommending them all to anyone who will listen to me. While this book may not have a crime that is as carefully crafted as some of the other novels in the series, there is still a lot going on. The fact that there is a seance or two in the town is unusual for Three Pines, but a visitor is drawn to the town to explore its spiritual power. The fact that there is drama back at police headquarters is not unusual, but the lengths that certain officers would go to to sabotage Gamache and his work is shocking. The fact that Clara is a talented artist is not a surprise, but her anxiety in the face of a major art critic's visit is extreme.
That's how it is with The Cruelest Month. April is a lot of drama--rainstorms (or this year, snowstorms), waiting, working, grinding away, and then at the end, all that trouble melts into beautiful warm days and gardens with the promise of lush flowers and bushels of vegetables and fruit. And the novel has a lot of that hard work and slow grinding, but what you get in the end is a lush story filled with amazing characters in a place where you could truly visit, or even retire.
And if you're like me, and you've discovered the phenomenon that is Ralph Cosham as narrator, then you'll be able to enjoy this as an audiobook, letting his perfect reading of Louise Penny's prose wash over you like a rainbow. Did you know that he never read his pages in advance? What you're hearing is him coming to the pages of the book for the first time and enjoying the story as much as we do. Just one more thing about this series that makes it so magical.