Follow Autoroute 10 southeast from Montreal towards the Eastern Townships, and after about an hour's drive turn off south down a country road into the mountains towards the US border.
This road will lead you deeper and deeper into the forest until the path becomes a dirt track and you stumble across a village "nestled in the palm of the rugged Canadian mountains, protected and hidden and rarely found except by accident".
This is the delightful fictional community of Three Pines as described by
Louise Penny in her novels featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the
Sûreté du Québec.
The Cruellest Month is the third in the series but my first exposure to this idyllic location - a place I feel I would love to linger, despite the mortality rate. When I began the story I thought it might be a mistake to pick up the series in the middle - I had to concentrate quite hard to unravel the backstory o
f corruption and double-dealing in the Quebec police. I also wasn't sure which characters I should be familiar with, but I drew up a list of names and roles of the kind often found in 'golden age' mysteries, which helped, and I was soon caught up in the storytelling.
The story follows C.I Gamache as he is called to investigate the death of a vibrant and popular Three Pines resident during a seance in a haunted house - apparently of fear. What follows is a classic "closed community" whodunnit with a convincing selection of suspects unfolding alongside the machinations of dark forces against Gamache in the Québec Sûreté.
The
Eastern Townships (Estrie) region of Quebec is a landscape of mountains, valleys, hills and picturesque villages which have become established favourites for visitors. There are several tourism sites: this one has a link to
videos of the region (in French) and this is an
official Quebec Tourism site.
Three Pines itself is a fictional village, in the general area
shown on my map. Some consider Three Pines to be based on the
author's own home village of Sutton, but Louise Penny herself says: "Three Pines itself I think of as simply a state of mind, we can always visit when we choose kindness over cynicism."
In fact she has used the mountain resort of
Sutton as a basis for the fictional St Remy in the stories. Another fictional location in the story based on a real place is Williamsb
urg, which is roughly based on the lovely village of
Knowlton. The real Cowansville is the site of the area's hospital, where the post-mortem of the victim in
The Cruellest Month is carried out.
The latest Three Pines novel
The Murder Stone (A Rule Against Murder - US) recently been released in the UK - Louise Penny talks about it on YouTube
here.The Cruellest Month is just the kind of puzzle I enjoy most, and the solution kept me guessing right until the end. I can hardly wait to read the other books - but unfortunately I have to, until they become available to Sony Readers in the UK!
Well, I've made it to Bristol for Crimefest 2009, and spent an enjoyable and inspirational afternoon at the crimewriting workshop lead by Peter Gutteridge and Janet Laurence. The workshop was very cosmopolitan, with participants travelling from Europe, the USA, Canada and Australia. Tomorrow I'm looking forward to the variety of panels, and a chance to pitch to an agent!
More details of the next Inspector Erlendur novel by Arnaldur Indridason. As revealed in my earlier blog, the title of the book is Hypothermia, and Amazon is now showing a release date of 3rd September in the UK (October 27th in the US). The translation is by Victoria Cribb, who competed the work on his previous novel, Arctic Chill, after the death of Bernard Scudder.
Perhaps everybody else already knows this, but more than ten years after the last book Henning Mankell has written another novel featuring Kurt Wallander - the final in the series, apparently. It's completed, and scheduled to be published in Sweden on August 18th August 2009 (and hopefully as soon as possible after that in English!)
A second series of Wallander, based on Henning Mankell's novels set in Ystad in southern Sweden, has been commissioned by the BBC.
f corruption and double-dealing in the Quebec police. I also wasn't sure which characters I should be familiar with, but I drew up a list of names and roles of the kind often found in 'golden age' mysteries, which helped, and I was soon caught up in the storytelling.
urg, which is roughly based on the lovely village of Knowlton. The real Cowansville is the site of the area's hospital, where the post-mortem of the victim in The Cruellest Month is carried out.
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