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When an intricate old map is found stuffed into the walls of the bistro in Three Pines, it at first seems no more than a curiosity. But the closer the villagers look, the stranger it becomes.

When a mysterious figure appears in Three Pines one cold November day, Armand Gamache and the rest of the villagers are at first curious. Then wary. Through rain and sleet, the figure stands unmoving, staring ahead. From the moment its shadow falls over the village, Gamache, now Chief Superintendent of the Sûreté du Québec, suspects the creature has deep roots and a dark purpose. Yet he does nothing. What can he do? Only watch and wait. And hope his mounting fears are not realized.

When a peculiar letter arrives inviting Armand Gamache to an abandoned farmhouse, the former head of the Sûreté du Québec discovers that a complete stranger has named him one of the executors of her will. Still on suspension, and frankly curious, Gamache accepts and soon learns that the other two executors are Myrna Landers, the bookseller from Three Pines, and a young builder. None of them had ever met the elderly woman.

The will is so odd and includes bequests that are so wildly unlikely that Gamache and the others suspect the woman must have been delusional. But what if, Gamache begins to ask himself, she was perfectly sane? When a body is found, the terms of the bizarre will suddenly seem less peculiar and far more menacing. But it isn't the only menace Gamache is facing.

The investigation into what happened six months ago – the events that led to his suspension – has dragged on into the dead of winter. And while most of the opioids he allowed to slip though his hands, in order to bring down the cartels, have been retrieved, there is one devastating exception. Enough narcotic to kill thousands has disappeared into inner city Montreal. With the deadly drug about to hit the streets, Gamache races for answers.

Armand Gamache returns to the Sûreté after being demoted.

Agent Lysette Cloutier's goddaughter Vivienne Godin is missing. They learn that Three Pines nearby Sûreté agent Bob Cameron had threatened Vivienne's abusive husband, Carl Tracey a week earlier. They have a confrontational and aggressive interview with Carl Tracey and find little when they search his house. A later search found that Tracey had recently cleaned up the house and burned all of Vivienne's belongings.

The Bella Bella River is rising threatening to flood in Three Pines and beyond. Vivienne's duffel bag is found during flood-related digging. Her car is found near a bridge and they find her body down stream. An autopsy finds that she was twenty weeks pregnant.

Beauvoir and Gamache begin building a case against Tracey, whom they believe is guilty.

Pauline Vachon, Tracey's mistress, eventually confesses to helping plan Vivienne's murder.

Sûreté agent Cameron admits to having an affair with Vivienne.

We learn that Homer Godin, who had abused his daughter Vivienne starting when she was a child, and agent Lysette Cloutier both confessed to killing Vivienne.

Jean-Guy recommends Isabelle Lacoste as Armand's second in command. The Beauvoir family, Annie is pregnant, go to Paris.

On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather as a family for a bistro dinner with Armand's godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. Walking home together after the meal, they watch in horror as Stephen is knocked down and critically injured in what Gamache knows is no accident, but a deliberate attempt on the elderly man's life. When a strange key is found in Stephen's possession it sends Armand, his wife Reine-Marie, and his former second-in-command at the Sûreté, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, from the top of the Tour d'Eiffel, to the bowels of the Paris Archives, from luxury hotels to odd, coded, works of art. It sends them deep into the secrets Armand's godfather has kept for decades. A gruesome discovery in Stephen's Paris apartment makes it clear the secrets are more rancid, the danger far greater and more imminent, than they realized. Soon the whole family is caught up in a web of lies and deceit. In order to find the truth, Gamache will have to decide whether he can trust his friends, his colleagues, his instincts, his own past. His own family.

You're a coward. Time and again, as the New Year approaches, that charge is leveled against Armand Gamache. It starts innocently enough. While the residents of the Québec village of Three Pines take advantage of the deep snow to ski and toboggan, to drink hot chocolate in the bistro and share meals together, the Chief Inspector finds his holiday with his family interrupted by a simple request. He's asked to provide security for what promises to be a non-event. A visiting Professor of Statistics will be giving a lecture at the nearby university. While he is perplexed as to why the head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec would be assigned this task, it sounds easy enough. That is until Gamache starts looking into Professor Abigail Robinson and discovers an agenda so repulsive he begs the university to cancel the lecture. They refuse, citing academic freedom, and accuse Gamache of censorship and intellectual cowardice. Before long, Professor Robinson's views start seeping into conversations. Spreading and infecting. So that truth and fact, reality and delusion are so confused it is near impossible to tell them apart. Discussions become debates, debates become arguments, which turn into fights. As sides are declared, a madness takes hold. Abigail Robinson promises that, if they follow her, ça va bien aller. All will be well. But not, Gamache and his team know, for everyone.

It is spring and Three Pines is reemerging after the harsh winter. But not everything buried should come alive again. Not everything lying dormant should reemerge. But something has. As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Sûreté du Québec investigators' lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they have arrived in the village of Three Pines. But to what end? Gamache and Beauvoir's memories of that tragic case, the one that first brought them together, come rushing back. Did their mother's murder hurt them beyond repair? Have those terrible wounds, buried for decades, festered and are now about to erupt? As Chief Inspector Gamache works to uncover answers, his alarm grows when a letter written by a long dead stone mason is discovered. In it the man describes his terror when bricking up an attic room somewhere in the village. Every word of the 160-year-old letter is filled with dread. When the room is found, the villagers decide to open it up. As the bricks are removed, Gamache, Beauvoir and the villagers discover a world of curiosities. But the head of homicide soon realizes there is more in that room than meets the eye. There are puzzles within puzzles, and hidden messages warning of mayhem and revenge.

• Still Life (2005)
• A Fatal Grace (2007)
• The Cruelest Month (2008)
• The Murder Stone (2009)
• The Brutal Telling (2009)
• Bury Your Dead (2010)
• A Trick of the Light (2011)
• The Hangman (2011)
• The Beautiful Mystery (2012)
• How the Light Gets In (2013)
• The Long Way Home (2014)
• The Nature of the Beast (2015)
• A Great Reckoning (2016)
• Glass Houses (2017)
• Kingdom of the Blind (2018)
• A Better Man (2019)
• All the Devils Are Here (2020)
• The Madness of Crowds (2021)
• A World of Curiosities (2022)

• State of Terror (2021; co-written with Hillary Rodham Clinton)

• Chief Inspector Armand Gamache

• Still Life: A Three Pines Mystery (2013; television film)
• Three Pines (2022 miniseries)

• Category