Summary: A dead body found near the village of Three Pines starts an investigation into botany, history, an IPO, and the family of a Three Pines resident.
I am a big fan of the Inspector Gamache series, but I have been pretty critical of the recent books being more political thriller than mystery. Miss Wolcott’s Ghost is a return to the mystery genre and I think it is one of the better books of the last 10 volumes. Most of the parts of what makes the series one that I love, are here. This is a book that revolves around the humanity of the characters. Gamache and his team are fallible, but good at their jobs. They have relationships with the others that cause them to care for one another, while also having strengths and weaknesses. And the characters of Three Pines are present in the story, even if it can be a bit thrown-in at times.
Gamache is the main character here. He is woken up in the middle of the night with a call that tells him about a dead body. There are two storytelling methods I didn’t love here, but are present throughout the book. The first is the way that a character that we do not know is introduced through flashbacks into their relationship with Gamache. I spent some time looking to see if I was supposed to know the character from prior books because it felt like it was presented as someone I should already know. And there is a bit of unreliable narrator to the flashbacks, which I don’t mind, but I there needed to be some indication that this was a new character in the series.
The second storytelling method that I didn’t love, is the large number of dream sequences. Many of the characters had nightmares or dreams, and while that does a good job indicating trauma, I don’t love it as a method of creating tension.
What I did like is that Louise Penny created enough misdirection and leads to keep the book interesting without doing a hard curve at the last minute. I think we were supposed to know the killer fairly early on, but we were not hit over the head with the solution. The presentation of, “we think we know who did it, but not how and why” is an important part of a police procedural. And other books in the series have presented Gamache and others on a false trail so that didn’t need to be here.
This is not the first time that Penny has used real historical details to build a mystery around. She did a good introducing fictionalized history and at the same time not making it too unrealistic. Gamache is best when he gets to interact with the people around him, while thinking deep thoughts. And there are good ethics and complex storylines to keep me involved.
I do think that Isabelle was a bit under-utilized in this book and I don’t think that the addiction aspects of Jean-Guy’s character are very well written, but I still think this was the best Gamache book recently.
Miss Wolcott’s Ghost by Louise Penny (Inspector Gamache #19) Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook