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...
The Nature of the Beast
The Nature of the Beast
Synopsis
Laurent Lepage is nine years old and tells tall tales — of dinosaurs, aliens, monsters in the woods. Three Pines has long since stopped listening. Then Laurent runs into the bistro with his most outlandish story yet, and the next day he does not come home.
Armand Gamache, retired and living in the village, joins the search. What they find in the forest suggests that this time the boy was telling the truth, and that something enormous has been hidden in the woods above Three Pines for decades.
The Nature of the Beast is the eleventh Chief Inspector Gamache novel. It moves from a village tragedy outward into arms dealing, old betrayals and the question that shadows Gamache throughout: what it costs when an adult decides a child is not worth believing.
Vibe
Genres
Characters
Armand GamacheProtagonist
Retired Chief Inspector living in Three Pines, drawn back into a case that begins with a missing child.
Laurent LepageSupporting
A nine-year-old boy known for wild stories — the last of which no one believed.
Reine-Marie GamacheSupporting
Gamache's wife, settled with him in the village.
Jean-Guy BeauvoirSupporting
Gamache's former second-in-command and son-in-law.
Ruth ZardoSupporting
The village poet, whose past proves entangled with what is found in the woods.
