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Oct 02, 2011

Chandra rated it:

Still Life is the first in a series of detective novels set in the province of Quebec featuring investigator Armand Gamache. When a beloved elderly woman is found dead in a bucolic village south of Montreal, Gamache and his team are called in to investigate. The nature of her death (an arrow through the heart in the middle of hunting season) suggests an accident. However, we all know this is a murder mystery novel. But, for the love of Pete, it takes a long time for the characters in the novel More...

7 comments like (11 people liked it)

Oct 13, 2010

Tatiana rated it:

I am a little sad that I can't give Still Life more than 2 stars. It was recommended to me and it's not a pleasant task to trash someone's suggestion, but what can I do, this book was just a barely OK read for me.

Still Life is a traditional ("cozy") mystery set in a Canadian village Three Pines. One Sunday morning a body of 76-year old Jane Neal - a long-time resident of the village - is found. At first, it appears that Jane was killed in a hunting accident, but later we fi More...

8 comments like (8 people liked it)

Aug 28, 2011

Leonie rated it:

I started reading A Fatal Grace and soon realised that I would be better to go back to the beginning with Louise Penny's first book set in the magical Quebecois village of Three Pines. I'm loving it so far and I'm only up to page 12. A sample:

"In the twenty-five years she'd lived in Three Pines she'd never, ever heard of a crime. The only reason doors were locked was to prevent neighbours from dropping off baskets of zucchini at harvest time."

I love the characters More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Aug 06, 2011

Juliana rated it:

3.5 stars
I liked the main detective and the characters are all interesting and three-dimensional. I had no idea who the killer really was (can be a positive or a negative) and felt that the story moved at a slightly slower pace than I expected. All in all, the book is well-written and it's a good story, but not that exciting. Will pick up #2 though, since I really did like Gamache.

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 23, 2011

Sheila added it

I've heard good things about Penny's mysteries, and probably should have finished this book before forming an opinion. Thing is, some of the writing and/or story distracted me from the story. The stereotype of a gay man 'trembling with pleasure' over the sight of cranberry glass, for instance. Does anyone really tremble over cranberry glass? An officer getting upset early on because the lead detective wasn't given the appropriate level of respect/awe... The cops' automatic disdain of civilia More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 06, 2008

Terri rated it:

Still Life is a mystery cozy featuring a small Canadian village in Southern Quebec called Three Pines, eccentric characters, and, of course, a murder.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is called upon to solve the death of Jane Neal, a beloved and elderly member of Three Pines. It is inconceivable to the residents that anyone would murder Jane, though, curiously, it appears that one of them is the murderer. Chief Inspector Gamache and his team must invade the privacy of these villagers in More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

LJ rated it:

STILL LIFE (Police Proced-Canada-Cont) – Ex
Penny, Louise – 1st book
Headline, 2005- Hardcover
*** Death brings Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his officers of the Sûreté du Quebec to the small village of Three Pines, Canada. Much-loved Jane Neal has been found dead in the woods. Gamache must determine whether her death was the result of a hunting accident, or deliberate murder.
*** Penny’s debut book is a true, classic traditional mystery. Penny has a wonderful writi More...

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 01, 2011

Laurel rated it:

You can definitely tell this is the first in a series. Initially, I was disappointed; "Still Life" does not lack for characters with potential, but I wanted more than just potential. I changed that perception towards the end, especially when I realized that in further books we'll not only meet Gamache again, but the other inhabitants of Three Pines as well. "Still Life" offers a depth of ideas, not the least being Oscar Wilde's "Conscience and cowardice are really the More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 25, 2012

Nancy rated it:

I am a little surprised that I liked this book so well. Not that it isn't without flaws. But kudos for a 1st try. I have read quite a few 1st novels, some apparently award winners, and hated a great many of them.

I thought she did the characterizations quite well in relatively short order, in fact by the end of chapter 2, the revelation of Jane's death to Clara, seemed fully realized and impactful, which surprised and impressed me.

I suppose this is a cozy, but I would More...

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Jan 20, 2012

Neile rated it:

I'm picky about the mysteries I read. I'm not a reader who reads mainly for plot, which is the main point of mysteries in many ways. I read for character, and often find that mysteries feel thin to me. This book was pressed on me by a friend, and because she'd recommended another mystery series that I love (the Maisie Dobbs series), I was willing to give this a shot even though it took me a while to get into this book. The main character here may actually be the (fictional) village of the settin More...

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Jan 17, 2012

Michele rated it:

This police procedural takes place in a tiny village near Quebec. I was surprised to find that the French Canadians have a culture which is in many small ways a total mystery to me. The sleuth was a policeman from the city, visiting the yokels to solve their murder. He was a type, a sort of Maigret with a very conventional life away from the job. The village provided a nice pool of suspects, some of whom had known one another for seventy years. The plot revolved around the local art show. The v More...

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Oct 26, 2011

Stephanie rated it:

"Still Life," by Louise Penny, takes place in Three Pines, a small rural village south of Montreal. This placid and beautiful hamlet is shaken to its core when a beloved and gentle seventy-six year old woman named Jane Neal is shot through the heart with an arrow.

In charge of the investigation is Chief Inspector of Homicide, Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec. Although he is in his mid-fifties, "violent death still surprised him." Gamache is a man of integrit More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 21, 2011

Jeanette rated it:

This review actually covers most of the Louise Penny books which I have been reading in the past few weeks. Most of the mysteries occur in the lovely little village of Three Pines in Quebec which Louise Penny has populated with delightful set of characters. Their is Ruth who has won the Governor General's prize for poetry but who can't say anything nice to anyone and loves to drink other people alcohol. She also has Rosa the duck who follows her around. The home of Clara and Peter, two local More...

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Oct 06, 2011

Ann rated it:

This is the first in a series of mysteries set in the tiny, perfect Quebecois village of Three Pines, starring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, his team of police detectives, and the village's motley crew of inhabitants.

Except maybe the village isn't so perfect: it appears to house a murderer. From the moment you find a body in the fall woods, the apparent victim of a hunting accident, you know something is amiss, and so does the intuitive Gamache. But who would kill the beloved, elde More...

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Sep 26, 2011

Sarah rated it:

In this first installment of her Armand Gamache series, Lousie Penny transcends beyond the predictable mystery genre with rich character and place building, strong writing, and realistic, though often humorous dialogue. The tiny, rustic village of Three Pines endures quite a shock when the body of retired school-teacher and community favorite Jane Neal is found in the woods. As Chief Inspector Gamache and his tightly-knit team of Montreal Surete officers investigate, everything about the town, More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 14, 2011

Rdevillez rated it:

This was the first of Louise Penny's books about Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surete de Quebec, that I ever read. Since then I have read them all.
Let me preface this review with a little information about myself as a reader. I read A LOT, and if a book is not well written I rarely get passed the first chapter before I toss it. Life is too short to waste reading poorly written stuff. That having been said, this book, and the others in the series are quite well written. Not too much More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 30, 2011

Fiona rated it:

Ironically, I heard about Louise Penny on C'est La Vie, the CBC English radio program about Canadian life in French. A translator was being interviewed because he wanted to bring the work of this best-selling Quebecoise author to the francophone majority of her home province. She is, apparently, very popular in the US but much less known here in Quebec, and I am, of course, happy to read her books in their original language. This is the first in a series featuring Inspector Armand Gamache, an More...

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Jul 25, 2011

James rated it:

Get ready for beautiful writing, a slow pace, and some twists you should see coming a few hundred pages off in Louise Penny's Still Life. I think the element I enjoyed most of this debut novel was the return-to-life of a convincing Hercule Poirot-like character. He's proper, not quite so quirky, inside the system (as a policeman rather than a private investigator), and not afraid to disagree with the police bureaucracy. It's a richer, deeper world than Agatha Christie usually wrote about, whi More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 17, 2011

Rebecca rated it:

I quite liked this cozy mystery set in a small town in Quebec--it's not a place I know much about, so I appreciated the setting, and I'm always fond of village mysteries. This was a good mystery with lots of twists and turns and red herrings, though when I was first listening to it I found it confusing because Penny breaks one of the major rules of fiction; changing points of view within a scene. She does it within paragraphs, and maybe even sentences, because the story is told from about ten di More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 25, 2011

Alexander rated it:

I really can't recommend Louise Penny's 2004 debut novel Still Life,, the first of six Chief Inspector Armand Gamache tales, set in the village of Three Pines, Quebec, more highly. It has taken me a while to get around to this series; the Canadian e-book rights were spotty despite the author having been celebrated in Canada and internationally -- she is the only author ever to win three Agatha awards in a row for Best Novel. Alas, Still Life remained out of reach of her fellow Canadian readers a More...

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Mar 10, 2011

Kathy rated it:

This is one of those middle-of-the-road books for me. It had some interesting parts and characters, but also some things I didn't like much. It wasn't terrible, though. It was a mystery, not the worst I've read, but not great either. I like mysteries to either be really clever or surprise me. This didn't surprise me, but then it could've been a number of other characters that wouldn't have surprised me either. We read it for book club and we did have a good discussion about the title, "Stil More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 01, 2011

Ronya rated it:

I don't like mysteries and I keep picking them up thinking that somehow, someday, one of them will be The One that makes me like the genre. Well--that day has arrived. The author’s first book in her Armand Gamache series (the 6th, Bury Your Dead, was just on the 2010 lists) is not your typical whodunit.

Montreal Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is called in to a small Canadian village to investigate the death of a kind elderly lady whose intent to reveal her long-unseen artwork is Gamach More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 18, 2011

Ed rated it:

"Still Life" is quite a debut for Louise Penny. Set in the small Quebec
town of Three Pines it has some aspects of a cozy and some of a police
procedural. There are some well drawn characters in town--the two gay men
who run the B&B, the antique dealer, a married couple who are working painters, a former winner of the Governor General's Award for poetry, a few others. The murder of a resident brings in Armand Gamache, Chief Inspector of the Surete du Quebec and his team. More...

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Jan 09, 2011

AJ rated it:

This really was a four star book with one hugely annoying character. I mean, I've been told by an editor in the past that if all of my characters are so friggin' kind and funny and smart, then there's no conflict in the book, because everyone just gets along. But is it really necessary to go so far as to make one character, who will clearly be recurring as part of the police squad, entirely awful? Every time she was in a scene, I started talking out loud to the book, "Oh just fire her, for More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Dec 31, 2010

Sandra rated it:

Was intrigues by the title and the cover art, something I am drawn to as I scan the shelves at the library or a bookstore. The book is set in Canada, Quebec to be accurate (a new setting for me) nicely written, develops the characters slowly, some you initially like some not, and the bias of other characters does influence initial thoughts. The detail of the French/English lifestyle is informative, they always eat the best food, just the pastries alone make my mouth water, and the coffee, wine, More...

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Dec 05, 2010

Deb rated it:

Still Life is Louise Penny's debut novel and introduces Chief Inspector Armand Gamache from the Surete de Quebec. He is an intelligent, highly literate, and confident man who believes in teamwork and collaboration. He is sent to the small village of Three Pines, a village so small that it doesn't appear on maps. to investigate the mysterious death of Jane Neal, the retired village school teacher. Three Pines is a very close-knit, friendly community where doors are always unlocked, and everybo More...

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Dec 04, 2010

Nathanael rated it:

Murder committed in a small Quebec town brings Chief Inspector Gamache to Three Pines. Story varies between Twin Peaks in Canada and a run-of-the-mill procedural, resulting in a not-quite-cozy mystery. The plot is incredibly predictable; the killer (and motive) is easily tagged by the end of the first chapter or so, and even the smaller mysteries (what exactly is bothering young Philippe?) aren’t that difficult to figure out. Tonally, the book’s all over the place, veering from minutely describ More...

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Oct 13, 2010

Pamela rated it:

"Still Life" is Louise Penney's first novel featuring Sûreté du Québec Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team. It was the runner up for the 2004 CWA Dagger Award for a debut. It also received starred reviews from Publishers' Weekly and Booklist. The accolades were well deserved.

Gamache and his team are called to the small town of Three Pines to investigate the death of the town's former schoolteacher, Jane Neal. At first, her death appears to be a hunting accident, she More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 08, 2010

Richard rated it:

Oh, the raptures of a first novel that also inaugurates a mystery series! It's like your first piece of birthday cake as a kid...OMIGOD this is good wait whaddaya mean I gotta wait another whole year to get another one you stink and you're mean *waaahIwantmymommy*

But crafty old fifty-plussers like moi wait. We lurk behind the bakery, sniffing the ineffable esters of birthday cakes destined for the inexperienced and the impatient and the indiscriminate, mentally filing away those scen More...

6 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 28, 2010

Ursula rated it:

The first book written by Louise Penny. Great characterizations bring people to life, and describes the meticulous process her protagonist goes through to solve a crime. Situated in a French-Canadian town, it also gives insight into the Anglo/French frictions.

There even is a lesson in the book, coming from a disillusioned ex-shrink. I summarize it here, because I really think that it is an important lesson for many of us in all kinds of situations:

There are tw More...

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