A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny

It's been far too long since I read Louise Penny. I remember starting the first Inspector Gamache novel, and now I've lost track of the last one that I've read. I grabbed A Trick of the Light, hoping that I didn't wildly misjudge which was the last book I read. While going back to Three Pines felt a little strange at first (I didn't recognise some of the incidents), it was good to be back.

In A Trick of the Light, Clara finally gets the artistic recognition she deserves with a solo exhibition. Everything seems to go well (or as well as it can go) until a body is found in Clara and Peter's garden the next day. Worse, the body is of someone Clara knows - Lillian, her one-time toxic best friend. Gamache is going to reach into her past if he's going to find out who's the killer.

In a way, this was a good book for getting back into the world of Three Pines because I've always had a soft spot for Clara. The development of her relationship with Peter was something that I've always seen coming and it was, in a way, cathartic to finally see what happens (hopefully that wasn't a spoiler). Anchoring the novel around her and her past made it easy for me to slip back into the world and I quickly remembered the other characters.

As more of the characters are revealed, the more the mystery unravels. Inspector Gamache and his team don't solve the mystery through fancy deductions of logic a la Holmes, but through hard work and by understanding the relationships between people. When the murderer is revealed, it feels like the right answer (although I did not manage to guess who it was).

Speaking of Inspector Gamache, it was a little heartbreaking to see the strain between him and Jean Guy, his protege. I don't recognise the incident that he talked about, the one that put the cracks in the relationship, but it made for a good subplot and I hope that it's solved in the next book (and I will be reading on to find out what happens).

If you're into people-centric mysteries, the Inspector Gamache series is for you. However, if this is the first time you've heard of the series, I would suggest that you start with the first book because the characters develop over the course of the books, and it would be strange to read them out of order.