Canadian novelist Louise Penny charmed me immediately with her rural Québec setting and atmosphere in her latest Inspector Gamache police procedural, which centers on the religious music of plainchant, and the history of its written notes. Although it is #8, it is my first—but not my last! Fortunately, each novel stands alone, although it is evident within the pages that there is strong character development that was started and has evolved from the previous seven books. The “beautiful mystery” is both a coiled and divine unraveling, and readers will be delighted by riddles and twists up to the very end. There are demons to unlock, both in the monastery and with the investigating officers. Penny brilliantly executes a keen thematic parallel to both.

The returning characters are Chief Inspector and his deputy and friend, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, of the Sûreté du Québec, (police department) and Gamache’s daughter Annie (small role here) as well as Gamache’s wife, who is only referred to in this book. Lastly, there is the man that Gamache despises, his superior in rank, Superintendent Sylvain Françoeur.

In this closed room murder mystery, Gamache and Beauvoir are investigating the murder of the prior and choirmaster of an obscurely located monastery in Northern Quebec, Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, where the abbot, Dom Phillipe, handpicks the monks for their composite talents. The crucial and coveted skill is their gift for Gregorian chanting, or plainchant. Now, Frère Mathieu, who is the spire of this talent, was found in the abbot’s garden, curled in a fetal position, his head smashed in.

The murder is likely an inside job, but the clues are minimal and the motivations are unclear. The abbot allows the brothers to break from their vow of silence (which is less a vow in this case than an agreement) in order to speak to the police. Gamache and Beauvoir have no choice but to stay at the monastery while they are investigating, a place that no outsider has ever been invited or allowed into before. As the investigation progresses, a discord is revealed, which has created a divide in the harmony of the brothers. That is all you need to know, as one of the delights of reading this mystery is for it to remain one, until you crack the case with the police.

For a while, this was a 4-star read. My own detective skills allowed me to figure out the answer to some key clues before they were revealed. Also, Penny took a large gamble by including a separate storyline, which annexes from an earlier book. At first, this bothered me, because I wanted to get on with this case. There are twenty-four monks, including the dead choirmaster. Twenty-three potential suspects kept me sufficiently engaged. And each brother had his own separate and enigmatic personality. But, gradually, an eloquent symmetry is exposed as the unresolved troubles of Beauvoir and Gamache gain poignancy. And the raw succession of Buavoir's torment is refreshingly authentic, rather than tied up with a bow. The book gets more exceptional as it advances.

Penny’s prose is rich with metaphor and filled with light, shadows, and darkness. Her aesthetic eye for detail contours the story with an elegant texture, and her knack for plunging the reader into the wilderness setting of the monastery is both dazzling and dignified.

“The corridor was filled with rainbows. Giddy prisms. Bouncing off the hard stone walls. Pooling on the slate floors. They shifted and merged and separated as though alive.”

I look forward to reading more from this author, and going back to her earlier books. I read on her site that the themes in her book were inspired by two lines in an Auden poem, in his elegy to Melville. “Goodness existed, that was the new knowledge/his terror had to blow itself quite out to let him see it.” Quite inspired.
4.5