Good writers build a strong story arc that sustains their novel. Better writers manage double arcs. It takes a Louise Penny to create three separate story lines, braiding them together seamlessly around a complex theme.
Bury Your Dead is a mystery masterpiece in which Penny shows confidence in her craft and in her reader. We’ll be deep in one storyline when she abruptly, with little or no transition, drops us into another a second story, then a third. We follow because we’re living the stories with her. We need no transition. We’re there.
The book includes one current and one past murder, plus a recent police raid that went horribly wrong, and from which both Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his second-on-command, Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir are recovering. In all three storylines, the title comes into play as characters bury their dead in multiple ways, sometimes unsuccessfully.
The current case is the murder of a man who has been in search of the body of the explorer Samuel de Champlain. He thinks he has found Champlain in the basement of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec. As Gamache is recovering at the home of his mentor in Quebec City, the Lit and His, as the society is nicknamed, has become one of Gamache’s favorite spots, and he is among the first on the scene when the murder is discovered. This plotline takes us into the history of Quebec and the centuries-long conflicts between the English and the French. Where is Champlain’s body? Nobody knows for sure, but Penny offers some suggestions. Under the Lit and His? You’ll have to read the book to find out. Here, the dead clearly include Champlain, but also the casualties of the Seven Years War of the mid 1700s between the French and English. Focusing on the ongoing conflict between the Quebecois and Quebeckers, Penny shows that those dead remain much among us in political tensions that still divide the people of Quebec.
The second story line is in Gamache’s head, as he relives the disastrous case that left him and Jean-Guy seriously wounded and killed several of Gamache’s agents, including Paul Morin, a young man with a talent on the violin and a gift of storytelling. Gamache maintains a 24-hour phone conversation with Morin while the entire Sûreté du Québec tries to find where the agent is being held. He has been kidnapped and attached to a bomb that will detonate in 24 hours—sooner, if the line goes quiet. Whoever planned this wants Gamache to stay at his desk. He doesn’t, of course. This is a seminal case in the series and influences several of the subsequent books. Yet the story is told only in flashbacks. On first reading, you think you missed a book somewhere, but no, this is the first mention of the case, told as Gamache mentally recreates it. Penny trusts us to get it, and we do. The burial of the agents who died under Gamache’s command was so traumatic that his grief-stricken face ended up on magazine covers.
The third story arc is perhaps the most tragic, ending the novel with a twist of family loss and revenge. It’s a continuation of the previous novel, A Brutal Telling, in which Olivier Brule, co-owner of the bistro in the mythical and magical Three Pines, was convicted of murder. Gamache begins rethinking the case and asks Jean-Guy, who is also on medical leave, to re-investigate. The resolution is the stuff of Greek tragedy, and leaves behind a devastated family. In this case, the dead aren’t who we think they are, nor are they buried where we think.
This is a heady book that gets better with multiple readings. It has Penny’s trademark charm and wit. One English character knows French well as a written language, but when she tries to speak it, she encourages people to become umlauts and calls the night a strawberry. Gamache wanders the streets of Old Quebec City in the quiet of the night, his steps crunching in the snow, with Henri, his beloved German Shepherd who is so full of love it doesn’t matter that he’s far from the world’s smartest dog. The Three Pines characters all make an appearance, and the ragged and rugged old poet, Ruth, builds a unique bond with Jean-Guy. It’s cold in Quebec, but these characters stay warm with one another, settled into comfy chairs in front of the bistro fire, watching through mullioned windows as the snow falls onto the three pines in the town center.
— Pat Prijatel
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