Louise Penny is a Canadian crime novelist, born in Toronto in 1958. She spent eighteen years as a radio host and journalist with the CBC before leaving in 1996 to write fiction. Her debut, Still Life, introduced Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and won the Arthur Ellis, Anthony, Barry and Dilys awards for best first novel. The Gamache books are set largely in Three Pines, a fictional Quebec village, and have since won multiple Agatha and Anthony awards. In 2021 she co-wrote...
A World of Curiosities
A World of Curiosities
Synopsis
A letter, a century and a half old, describes a stone mason bricking up a room in the old Hadley house because of what was inside. When the villagers of Three Pines open it, they find a chamber crowded with oddities — and a painting: a version of the village itself, altered, salted with puzzles and hidden messages, and threaded through with a promise of revenge.
At the same time Fiona and Sam Arsenault come back to Three Pines. They are the children of the murdered woman in the very first case Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir worked together, years before, and their return unsettles both men for reasons they do not entirely agree on.
A World of Curiosities is the eighteenth Chief Inspector Gamache novel. It reaches back to the beginning of the partnership at the heart of the series, and brings an old enemy to the edge of the village.
Vibe
Genres
Characters
Armand GamacheProtagonist
Chief Inspector of homicide, confronting a case that reaches back to the start of his partnership with Beauvoir.
Jean-Guy BeauvoirProtagonist
Gamache's son-in-law and second-in-command; the flashbacks trace their first case together.
Fiona ArsenaultSupporting
Daughter of a murder victim from Gamache and Beauvoir's first case, returned to Three Pines.
Sam ArsenaultSupporting
Fiona's brother, whom Gamache regards with deep unease.
Ruth ZardoSupporting
The village poet.
