A Trick of the Light

By Louise Penny

Book Overview

A New York Times Notable Crime Book and Favorite Cozy for 2011
A Publishers Weekly Best Mystery/Thriller books for 2011

With A Trick of the Light, Louise Penny takes us back to the deceptively peaceful village of Three Pines in this brilliant novel in her award-winning, New York Times bestselling series featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.

Hearts are broken, Lillian Dyson carefully underlined in a book. Sweet relationships are dead.

But now Lillian herself is dead. Found among the bleeding hearts and lilacs of Clara Morrow's garden in Three Pines, shattering the celebrations of Clara's solo show at the famed Mus?e in Montreal. Chief Inspector Gamache, the head of homicide at the S?ret? du Qu?bec, is called to the tiny Quebec village and there he finds the art world gathered, and with it a world of shading and nuance, a world of shadow and light. Where nothing is as it seems. Behind every smile there lurks a sneer. Inside every sweet relationship there hides a broken heart.
And even when facts are slowly exposed, it is no longer clear to Gamache and his team if what they've found is the truth, or simply a trick of the light.

Penny has been compared to Agatha Christie [but] it sells her short. Her characters are too rich, her grasp of nuance and human psychology too firm.... --Booklist (starred review)

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1250007348
• ISBN13: 9781250007346
• Release Date: July 2012
• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Disappointing. Thin and flaccid storytelling.

I had heard of the other novels and seen one fairly decent TV adaptation, but (full disclosure) I couldn't force myself beyond page 57. The plot is thin and gratuitously drawn-out. It feels as though we must fill in the blanks by supplying the missing emotions and sensations, as well as flashing back to earlier novels. Rather than make us FEEL things, the author's thinly drawn characters and situations are related to us second-hand and from a distance.