“Still Life” - Louise Penny

(Chief Inspector Gamache book 1)

🎨 Ever since I read my first Agatha Christie novel, somewhere around the 6th grade, I have been a devotee of the cozy mystery genre. It should come as no surprise that I’m always on the lookout for new iterations of my favorite detectives: M. Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. Penny hits the jackpot with this series!

🎨 With full confidence, I can tell all fellow Poirot fans, that M. L’Inspecteur Gamache truly is a modern Poirot; only he is Quebecois not Belgian. I love the emotional intelligence and sensitivity of Gamache. He is very like Papa Poirot but he is not pompous, and is very aware of his own fallibility.

🎨 It’s not just Gamache who is lovable in this novel. Penny details the lives and natures of the inhabitants of Three Pines such that I found myself caring about all of them (save maybe Ruth; she’s hard to love).

🎨 I also enjoyed the psychological aspect of Nichol and Phillipe - each on that figurative island refusing help yet placing all the blame for their troubles externally. A third of the way in, Nichol seems suddenly to become defiant toward those she admires. It feels like a jarring change. Reading a little further, Gamache makes the same observation, so it’s a deliberately abrupt change. No spoilers, but the Nichols tension with her superiors does not get resolved here; I assume she provides a recurring source of friction for later novels.

🎨 I have been on the waitlist for the second book in the series (“A Fatal Grace”) for weeks. My hold for the third book came up and I let it lapse because I’m too Type-A to read the novels out of order. Sigh.