Still Life by Louise Penny was published in 2005 and it’s the first book in her Three Pines series. I got to this one late because I ended up reading book 3 first, just because I wasn’t patient enough to wait to get it from the library. I know, I’m always saying that I’ll not read books out of sync again, but there you go!

I ended up buying this book because it is now unavailable from Fife libraries. It’s not that I’m dead against buying books but I’m trying not to buy them at the moment, until I read some of the ones in my piles, and I’m also trying to use the libraries more as I don’t want them to close down, some local ones are still under threat and I’m doing my best to keep their borrowing numbers up.

Anyway, back to Still Life, I really enjoyed this one, it was lovely to see the birth of the Three Pines community which is in Quebec and to understand some of the frictions involved in living in French Canada for those who aren’t French Canadian.

Early one morning a popular member of the village is found dead in a wood. Who would possibly want to kill the elderly lady? Perhaps she wasn’t murdered but was the victim of a hunting accident. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is called in to investigate and he and his team soon find that the idyllic looking community isn’t all it seems.

This book cleared up some questions for me, such as what was the problem with Agent Nichol? a really unlikeable character. In fact Three Pines isn’t a stranger to odd characters and it’s probably that which makes it seem like such a realistic setting. I found myself wondering what on Earth Clara saw in her husband Peter who seems like an arrogant insensitive pain – and then suddenly he redeems himself, making the whole relationship completely believable. Now I’m waiting for number 4 in the series. Thanks Joan, for pointing me in the direction of this series.