The only book that doesn’t take place in Three Pines and only contains some of the cops. This is a fascinating side story for Penny, taking place entirely in a monastery in the northern part of the country. The central question is about plainchant or Gregorian chants and a murder that takes place among a cloistered order. Interesting, and some of the same storyline with Gamache and Beauvoir and the director of the cops and their conflicts. I enjoyed this and plowed right through it.

Another installation, this one about Claire’s ascension in the art world and an old friend of hers who winds up dead in her garden. A great sub-story about the nature of addiction and redemption which is also a good look into what has been going on with Beauvoir since the attack at the factory. A good book but not as delightful as the previous one.

I haven’t read a good medical examiner book in a while. This one was great. You think it’s going to be all about 911 (Melinek was a medical examiner in NYC when it happened) but it’s a more wide ranging book about what it’s like to be a doctor wife and mother and deal with some of the worst and grossest medical cases (and family members of some of those cases). Melinek talks about her own feelings concerning her father’s suicide when she was little and only at the end does she give a blow by blow of the first few days working for the ME’s office after 911. This book was a refreshing change from Mary Roach’s somewhat jokey approach to corpses and dead people.

Probably my favorite so far and not just because it has a library in it. This book is a great weaving of a few stories that all come together nicely. The loose threads from the last book’s mystery, a now-in-the-past terrible thing that has happened to Inspector Gamache in between that book and this one, and a new mystery about a murder in a library. The usual friction between the anglophones and the francophones is at a peak in this book which takes place largely outside of Three Pines.

I swear I have been reading books other than these, but I just haven’t finished any of them yet. This is another in the series, a bit more close to home. Murder in the village! A villager suspected! Has a very dissatisfying resolution which winds up getting better resolved with the book after this one. On its own this book was a lot of bad mojo without the better feeling of a resolution where you felt the good guys won.

A fun addition to this set of cop mysteries. This one takes place at a remote resort and involves the larger family of one of the usual Three Pines people. Penny really gets to go to town with her rich descriptions by talking about the routines and food and trappings of this high class lodge. Enjoyable but with a lot of awful people.