I was hoping to have discovered a "new" series to enjoy since this book is apparently the sixth Inspector Gamache adventure but sadly I was not that impressed. I enjoyed the tidbits of Quebec history and the descriptions of Old Quebec but the story itself lagged and finally just became uninteresting. It didn't help that there were three seperate plots to keep track of. Sometimes this kind of writing works but not in this case, it was just annoying, mainly because one or possibly two of the plot threads were heavily based on previous "cases" (i.e. the first five novels in the series, I assume) with which I, being new to this fictional version of the Surete du Quebec, am entirely unfamiliar. The overly descriptive and fragmentary writing style took some getting used to and the complex interior emotional lives of the main characters were, frankly, boring. By the time I got to the ending, with its several last-minute reveals, I just didn't care anymore. My favorite character by far turned out to be Henri, the Inspector's German Shepherd.