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Book Review of Bury Your Dead (Chief Inspector Gamache, Bk 6)

Bury Your Dead (Chief Inspector Gamache, Bk 6)
perryfran avatar reviewed on + 1183 more book reviews


Another excellent outing in Penny's Gamache series. This one is a followup to the previous book, The Brutal Telling and ties up some loose ends relating to the killing of the hermit and who did it as related in Telling. Gamache kept getting letters from Gabri telling him it didn't make sense..."why would Olivier move the body?" After giving it much consideration, Gamache sends Beauvoir back to Three Pines to try to prove that Olivier did not murder the hermit.

Gamache and Beauvoir are both recuperating from an investigation gone wrong where several agents were killed and both Gamache and Beauvoir were severely wounded. Beauvoir makes this an excuse for revisiting Three Pines as a form of relaxation. In the mean time, Gamache is staying in Quebec City with his old mentor, Emile, trying to put the faulty investigation out of his mind. So of course, a body turns up murdered in the Literary and Historical (Lit and His) Society where Gamache had been doing some research. The Lit and His is an Anglo library dating back a couple of centuries and accordingly it is scorned by the Quebec separatists. The murdered man was an eccentric who had been looking for the body of the Quebec founder, Samuel de Champlain whose body disappeared centuries ago. So why would anyone want to kill him? Gamache of course gets involved in this somewhat convoluted case and as part of this, Penny really provides some interesting history on Quebec as well as the city itself.

This was a really compelling novel that kept me turning the pages. I was surprised by the results of Beauvoir's re-investigation of the murder of the hermit although there were a couple of clues that almost gave it away. I was also interested in the Quebec history provided which I really knew little about and will probably be reading more on Quebec and Champlain. Also, the city itself sounds like a very interesting place to visit. Maybe someday! Looking forward to continuing with this series.