Still Life: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel

Well-written and thoughtful book. Love style of author. Surprise til end! First in series of Inspector Gamache mysteries, set in Quebec and I am now hooked.

Engaging first novel featuring French Canadian inspector Armand Gamache, a thoughtful and team-oriented police detective with a happy marriage, no substance abuse problems, and not much angst. The solution to the mystery seemed obvious from early on (though I had the personality and therefore the motive of the culprit all wrong), but the book's central pleasure is the interaction of the characters - how they piece together the truth, rather than specifically what the truth turns out to be.

Slow paced, slightly confusing. Very few clues are given so you are reading about the relationships but not able to participate in finding the murderer. I would consider it a cozy mystery if there were a female sleuth to balance the police inspector

Still Life by Louise Penny; (4*)This novel is a mystery that falls into the category of a 'cozy'; a crime novel without reliance on sex or violence which typically takes place in a small community or village. I enjoyed it a great deal.It is the first of Penny’s Inspector Gamache novels which are set in the small village of Three Pines in Quebec. A beloved spinster has been killed while walking in the woods early one morning. Was she killed by accident, by hunters from out of town who often frequent the woods? Or was she killed by foul play, by someone who just wants it to look like an accident?The novel is filled with a cast of wonderful small town characters and the police officers are both intelligent and kind. I found all of the interactions between the people of the community so interesting and also their interactions with the police officers investigating the crime.I look forward to the next book of this series. I think Penny's village characters will grow and become even better over time as the reader becomes more familiar with names and characteristics. (love the gay couple who own & run the B & B and little restaurant)I wish I had not waited so long to begin this series.

I couldn't remember when or why I bought this book on Audible, so I didn't know what to expect when I started listening to it, but I was pleasantly surprised by the richly drawn portrait of life in the small Canadian town of Three Pines -- and the mysteries surrounding two older women's deaths.

I enjoyed all of the characters, including the two gay men who run the B&B, who were portrayed in a somewhat flamboyant but ultimately respectful manner. The part where we learn "who dunnit" was the least believable or enjoyable to me, as the guilty character went too far outside the boundaries of his previous characterization to be believable.

But I loved the exchanges between Inspector Gamache and the clueless newbie on the team as well as the parts from her POV, as it was so painfully clear that she had no business doing police work (despite her occasional good insight). My favorite part was when she saw the note on a potential suspect's mirror that read "you're looking at the problem," and instead of stopping to apply that bit of wisdom to herself, she turned around to investigate the part of the room reflected in the mirror, thinking that perhaps it would hold a clue to the mystery. A bit over the top, perhaps, but we've all known people who are almost as painfully un-self-aware as she is.

A really well-done mystery that develops like an ordinary novel, rather than a formulaic series entry (or, in this case, series starter). The characters are fully fleshed out, not quirky or gimmicky. Penny has an uncanny ability to expose those nasty hidden feelings we all have (perhaps I should speak only for myself), and yet keep the personalities engaging. Set in a rather wistfully imagined small Canadian community, this book offers a main plot line with an underlying subplot. A very pleasant but not cloying village mystery.

This was a good book. I'm sad that there is not more of this series on Scribd. For those who are new to Louise Penny, this book was good, but she gets better and better, which is why I gave this 4 stars and not 5. Her style gets more defined, the characters get more solid, the plots get more intriguing with little side twists and mysteries inside the bigger mystery, and by the 3rd and 4th books, I was hooked and couldn't put them down. I am just now starting the 5th. In this first book, you will get to know the characters that become like friends as you read the series. As for the plot of Still Life, etc., to be honest, I figured it out half way through. However, if you like this book, keep reading! The quaint community, the Inspector, and his team are so well characterized that they became like personal friends! The next one is even better and the stories, personal lives, twists and plots get better and better the farther you read into the lives of those who live in Three Pines.
P.S. the narrator could be more exciting if you get the audiobook, but you get used to him

The characters, the writing, the lessons taught about observations and learning how to listen. I really like the main character, Inspector Gamache. I now have to read the whole series, and that always excites me, to find an author I enjoy enough to be compelled to do that.

A great murder mystery in a beautiful little town I'd love to visit.

Brilliant and affecting series

I purchased the first book on sale from Audible and quickly bought this box set before even finishing the narration (which was excellent btw). The mysteries are good but the characters are magnificent. She had a set touch in the crafting and depicting each and every one. These are people you want to spend time with.

An amazing 1st novel, although I had to apply Nancy Pearl’s ‘Rule of 50’ to get past some early thick descriptive passages.
It gave a good snapshot of Canadian life.
The author is skilled in understanding and portraying human nature.
The sprinkling of literary quotes and believable characters gave the narrative life.
Several times the killer was identified only to have more evidence to consider …

This is a sample only, not the full book. The stars do not reflect the quality of the writing, only the disappointment that I felt that it was not the complete version.

I loved it. Yes I had figured out that murderer but the prose , the many levels that she works on kept me going. I couldn't put it down. I'm curious though..what happens to Nichol?

A friend recommended this series because I'm studying up on Quebec before my vacation. Read as audio. I don't typically read contemporary mysteries, but this was special because of the Quebecoi setting. Enjoyed how the French/English cultural differences came up often. Was so surprised how many library readers had this in both e-audio & e-book on hold (I have seven library systems I toggle between). I may read book 2.

Good cozy mystery. Exactly as advertised.

Of course I'm reading this series from the beginning again because of the new Amazon series. The first two episodes weren't bad except that you can't capture the magic of Three Pines outside of Louise Penny's words.

A little disappointing. A few chapters, 7 - 8 I think, "a lotta yaddah", didn't do much for me, though I'm sure the sleuths here would disagree. The final scene was a "thriller". Interesting, but Gamache wasn't the first to begin the big reveal which occurs in the penultimate chapter. The last chapter was a group-wide discussion of motives, means, and opportunity.

I listened to the book on audio and loved it! I was already invested in the characters and the wonderful community of Three Pines as I had read many of the other books in the series. These books are more about the very human characters, with their quirks and flaws, rather than the actual solving of crimes, which have a lot of underlying psychological aspects to them. I also appreciated the humor of the characters, with many subtle, clever one-liners.

Have read the whole series, but I was heading to Canada and would be visiting Knowlton (aka Three Pines) so I felt it would be appropriate to re-read the first book. It was a good decision!

Pros: A decently complex mystery that convincingly leads investigators down a number of productive and unproductive paths; an excellent lead character (Gamache); a setting whose individual locations are vividly portrayed; a rather compassionate, people-positive worldview on the author's part. I can see why people like the books. They imply that the world is full of really nice people, plus a few baddies who only need to be found out and taken care of.

Cons: Prose. Even allowing for this being the author's first novel, the writing is poor. I suffered particularly from excessive point-of-view switching — three characters may share their internal monologues in the course of a single page, and the change is not always clearly signaled. Most often it's the viewpoint of the first character mentioned in the paragraph, but not always. I was particularly confused when one paragraph started off with Beauvoir closing a gate and continued with a mention of what Gamache was thinking, momentarily leading me to believe that Beauvoir was telepathic. I finally decided to roll with it and to try to figure it out from the context, while assuming that some of the value judgments were actually the author's. Pronouns were no help; "he" might refer to three different people in three successive mentions.

Do I sound like a persnickety grammarian? Maybe I do, but my point isn't the grammar, which is technically correct. It's that the writing style is ambiguous and vague where the author presumably intends it to be clear. This vagueness extends to the village of Three Pines. As I said, the locations are vivid, but the village as a whole never comes into focus. We're told there are four main streets radiating out from a center green. But we meet only about twelve or fifteen people, and three kids. Is this a village of 200? 1000? 10,000? Who can tell? (Five years ago I read the sixth book in the series, which was no clearer on this point.)

Many of the characters are one-note. The unsympathetic characters, in particular, seem to have no redeeming qualities at all, and it was grating to read about them and their petty, cartoonish thoughts. (In this novel, little is shown through a character's actions. Instead, interior thoughts serve as unceasing exposition, while the plot is driven largely through dialogue. Overall, I'd say there's a paragraph of inner musing for every line of dialogue.) Another character showed astonishing emotional intelligence in one scene, and then for the rest of the book was childish and cruel, which I could never reconcile. Maybe Penny intended to arouse the reader's suspicion of this character as a suspect.

When we do meet the murderer, we get the murder-speech in which he or she (no spoilers here!) describes all of the murder plans and justifications, past and present, while in the midst of trying to complete the fraught task of laying hold of and killing the latest victim. A fine multitasker.

I'll stick with Ross Macdonald.

I enjoyed this mystery. Good characters, decent plot, and an interesting setting in rural Canada. Some of the observations on relationships and psychology were quite interesting. The audiobook helped with the French pronunciations. Once the accents were there, reading on my own was easier.

Yes, this is book is terrible, but is that any reason to give it fewer than three stars? Not in this case, since it never promises to be anything other than terrible. A woman is cosily murdered (even the murder wound is neat) in a cosy town and the cosy Inspector Gamache investigates which of the cosy cast of characters committed the (fairly) foul deed. The prose is occasionally awkward, but mostly fine; the characters are ridiculous, but then they're supposed to be; the plot moves along almost quick enough to distract from the large holes, but not quite.

Cosy crime is not a genre I read often, but if I were to read it again, I'd probably choose the next book in this series, as this is just as serviceable as genre fiction should be.

I like that there is a lot of psychology evident in this book.

At times I thought this book was clever and interesting. In the end I consider the whole as odd

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his colleagues from Quebec are called to investigate the murder of a woman found in the woods in the small Canadian town of Three Pines. Three Pines is a small town in the Eastern Townships and everyone knows everyone's business. Jane Neal, a retired school teacher and artist, was a friend to all and no one can understand who would want to murder her. A recent painting Jane submitted to local art show provides clues.

This was OK. I thought some of the writing was a bit clunky.

Great character development. The interview with Louise Penny was a bonus.

This was 3.5 starts rounded up for me. Cozy mystery seems like an oxymoron to me, but the setting of this story is super cozy. We read this for book club and it seemed like those who listened to the audio version didn't seem to enjoy it as much.

Three Pines and main characters are introduced with the murder of Jane Neal. Gamache flushes out the murderer who happens to be a local friend of Clara and Peter. (Second time I’ve read this one!)

Still Life: Chief Inspector Gamache is a story that has many characters who are difficult to follow. It takes place in a small village that is not even on a map. There is a murder. It is Chief Inspector Gamache's job to figure out who did it. Unfortunately, as stated above, it is difficult to follow the characters. The book just comes to an end. Consequently, only three stars were awarded to this book.