A Trick of the Light - Louise Penny

A Trick of the Light is book number seven in Louise Penny’s seventeen-book Chief Inspector Gamache series. The novel falls near the halfway point of the series in more ways than one. By this point, longtime series readers already knew the main characters well enough to appreciate how their experiences were changing them and their relationships to each other. Gamache and his fellow cops had been through a traumatic experience that changed all of them — and some were more obviously than others still suffering from the psychological trauma of the shootout they were so lucky to have survived. But Gamache and his second-in-command, Jean Guy Beauvoir, who both first came to Three Pines on a murder investigation, by now consider several of the villagers friends, a development that often complicates their official visits to the community. 

Much has been revealed about personal relationships already, but those relationships continue to evolve in A Trick of the Light. Gamache and Jean Guy are struggling to define the way they see each other after what they experienced together in the infamous warehouse gun battle that will forever mark their careers and their feelings about each other. Jean Guy’s marriage is in trouble; Annie’s (Gamache’s daughter) marriage is in trouble; and the cracks in the marriage of Clara and Peter Morrow (longtime Three Pines residents) are about to shatter that relationship. Still, despite the number of times that Gamache has been called to Three Pines on serious police business, he realizes now that he loves the place and feels great peace there. All of these things foreshadow a new phase in lives that will be explored in the second half of the series.

Right now, though, Clara Morrow is enjoying the moment. After years of struggling as the anonymous artist wife of her slightly better known husband Peter, whose art pays most of the family bills, Clara is about to get the break of a lifetime: the major solo show that could suddenly make her famous and wealthy. Despite Clara’s fears that it is all too good to be true, the show goes well and the reviews, though a bit mixed, are enthusiastically positive in the publications that count most in the art world. But Clara, as it turns out, was right to be worried because the morning after her celebratory party in Three Pines her husband discovers a dead body in their backyard. 

Once again, Gamache and his investigatory team set up shop in little Three Pines. And that’s when the fun begins. Gamache will learn the dirty little secret of the Québec art world: nothing is as it first seems; it is a world of greed, jealousy, ego, and dirty tricks. The book jacket puts it this way:

“Behind every smile there lurks a sneer. Inside every sweet relationship there hides a broken heart. And even when facts are slowly exposed, it is no longer clear to Gamache and his team if what they’ve found is the truth, or simply a trick of the light.”

Bottom Line: All of the best detective/crime series have one thing in common: memorable characters that readers enjoy revisiting year after year. Setting and plots are important, of course, but without continuing characters the reader can truly care about, those alone will not make a series stand out from the crowd for long. Louise Penny, remarkable storyteller that she is, offers the whole package. If you are not already reading the Gamache series, you need to grab a copy of Still Life (2005) and get started.

Louise Penny