Ep 731 - Still Life (Inspector Gamache #1), by Louise Penny

Summary

Overdue Ep 731 - Still Life (Inspector Gamache #1), by Louise Penny

Podcast: Overdue (Headgum)
Hosts: Andrew and Craig
Date: December 1, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode tackles Still Life, the first novel in Louise Penny’s beloved Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series. Andrew leads Craig through the origins, tone, and plot of this “cozy” Quebec-set murder mystery, exploring its memorable characters, the series’ unique charms, and what Penny’s work reveals about Canadian culture, community, and crime fiction.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Louise Penny’s Path to Mystery Mastery

Time Stamps: 07:53 – 11:56

• Penny is described as the “Agatha Christie of Canada.”
• Spent 20 years as a CBC journalist before pursuing novel writing after getting sober and marrying her husband.
• She delayed novel-writing out of fear: “Once you actually commit to trying… then you don’t get to wait to try it anymore.” —Craig (09:40)
• She credits personal growth, loss, and learning compassion for giving her the insight to write fiction.
• Still Life was rejected by publishers until it won second place in the prestigious Debut Dagger contest, leading to a book deal.

Notable Quote

“I had to be hurt into novel writing. I had to get to a certain stage. I had to lose enough people. I had to have a lot of ego pounded out of me and pride. I had to learn compassion.”
— Louise Penny, quoted by Craig (10:15)

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2. Cozy Village Mystery: Tropes & Tone

Time Stamps: 07:17 – 08:33, 17:58 – 19:44

• Penny’s stories are set in Three Pines, a fictional, tight-knit village in Quebec.
• Discussed the hallmarks of cozy mysteries — familiar, close communities, unexpected violence, a focus on relationships and restoration, not gore.
• Three Pines is painted as comforting and emotionally safe, despite the physical danger of repeated murders.
• 9/11 is cited as an influence: creating emotional safety in fiction after an era-shifting trauma.

Notable Quote

“She wanted to create a sense of safety... Nowhere is actually physically safe. But you could guarantee a sort of emotional safety.”
— Craig referencing Penny’s interviews (19:15)

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3. Quebec as Character: Language, Culture, and Otherness

Time Stamps: 13:40 – 16:24

• The Quebec setting is integral. Both English/French tensions and “otherness” are present.
• The strange status of English speakers in the Francophone province is addressed, alongside real-world background like the 1995 Quebec independence referendum and language laws.
• Penny notes that everyone in Quebec defines themselves as “the other,” fueling alienation and, thus, mystery.
• Three Pines allows characters (and readers) to engage with a blend of cultures, isolation, and connection.

Notable Quote

"Quebec is an idea that works in reality, but not on paper."
— Andrew, paraphrasing the novel's perspective (13:58)

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4. Meet Chief Inspector Gamache & His World

Time Stamps: 31:35 – 36:12

• Gamache is a homicide detective from Montreal—an optimist and an excellent listener, not yet jaded by violence.
• He is avuncular (uncle-like), patient, and emotionally intelligent, inspiring trust in locals and subordinates alike.
• Gamache’s investigative approach: observe, listen, put people at ease, avoid jumping to conclusions.
• Contrasted with his awkward rookie agent, Yvette Nichol, illustrating how Gamache works by highlighting what she misses.

Notable Quote

“His particular set of skills... is listening. It is observing. It is being an active listener, putting people at ease, not letting anything escape his notice.”
— Andrew (37:47)

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5. Character Cast & Community Dynamics

Time Stamps: 40:05 – 56:17

• The village is filled with artists, café owners, and eccentrics—each a potential suspect or witness.
• Key characters:
  • Jane Neal (murder victim & reclusive artist)
  • Clara & Peter Morrow (adoptive daughter & son-in-law of sorts, both artists)
  • Ben Hadley (childhood friend harboring secrets)
  • Matthew & Philippe Croft (father and troubled teenage son)
  • Yolande Fontaine (Jane’s estranged niece)
  • Ruth Zardo (mean-spirited poet)
  • Olivier & Gabri (gay café owners, victims of a hate crime)
• The community’s quirks, secrets, and interpersonal tensions drive both plot and mood, making “place” a character.

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6. The Murder & Investigation

Time Stamps: 31:35 – 70:07

• Jane Neal is found dead in the woods, killed by an arrow (not obviously a murder at first).
• Gamache investigates methodically: talking with villagers, observing art, probing motives old and new.
• Misdirection: Suspicion falls on Matthew and Philippe Croft after incriminating evidence is found and odd behavior observed.
• The book defies “locked room” tropes, favoring a network of village secrets, slow-revealed clues, and social tensions.

Notable Quote

"A lot of murders are... committed years and years and years before... It's a thing that's been set in motion way before the actual events."
— Andrew (58:16)

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7. Art, Secrets & Conclusion

Time Stamps: 70:07 – 74:05

• The crucial clue is embedded in Jane’s first (and last) publicly exhibited painting—her art depicts her killer and their secrets.
• Ben Hadley, bitter and jealous, is revealed as the murderer; he killed his mother to secure an inheritance, and Jane’s painting threatens his exposure.
• The final act: Ben kidnaps Clara to silence her, but Gamache intervenes.

Notable Quote

“Jane painted his weird little stick figure in such a way that everybody would be able to look at it and also figure it out. That’s the power of art, baby.”
— Andrew (74:05)

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8. Thematic Threads & Social Context

Time Stamps: 55:35 – 76:14

• The novel, set in the early 2000s, reflects social attitudes of the time, particularly toward sexuality and coming out.
• Young Philippe’s angst (initially a murder suspect) is ultimately revealed as closeted distress; the outcome is unexpectedly compassionate, offering potential for healing in the community.
• The series is praised for emotional intelligence, comfort, and restorative justice, even amidst darkness.

Notable Quote

“Try to keep this kid from going down a bad path. Try to give him a route to be himself.”
— Andrew (75:35)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Gamache:
  “He’s the kind of guy you don’t want to disappoint.”
  — Andrew (36:33)

• On writing cozy mysteries after 9/11:
  “I wanted to create a sense of safety at the same time [as] the other thing 9/11 taught us—physical safety is an illusion. Even in Three Pines, nowhere is actually physically safe.”
  — Craig referencing Penny (19:15)

• French-English Tension:
  “Quebec had an English minority surrounded by a French majority who were themselves eclipsed by the English majority in the rest of the country. So, in Quebec, everyone defines themselves as the other.”
  — Craig, quoting Penny (14:28)

• On suspecting the wrong person:
  “If you’re acquainted with this type of story at all, I think it’ll be fairly obvious who it could be pretty early on.”
  — Andrew (57:33)

• On the “cozy” vibe:
  “Three Pines is... a murder haven. [But] how is the rent so dang high?”
  — Craig (18:14)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Introduction to Louise Penny and her background: 07:53 – 11:56
• Cozy Mystery & Three Pines: 17:58 – 19:44
• French-English and Quebec Context: 13:40 – 16:24
• Still Life’s Setup – The Murder: 31:35 – 34:57
• Key Characters Introduction: 40:05 – 56:17
• Gamache’s Investigative Approach: 36:33 – 38:17, 58:16 – 60:13
• Plot Unraveling: Red Herrings & Real Solution: 64:14 – 74:05
• Denouement & Social Themes: 74:05 – 76:14

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Tone and Style

The hosts keep a warm, humorous tone—leaning into puns, playful pronunciation debates, and the comfort-food appeal of the genre. They blend genuine analysis with jokes, keeping the episode lively and accessible to longtime fans and newcomers alike.

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Final Thoughts

Andrew recommends the series for its gentle tension, rich sense of place, and emotional depth, even for listeners who may have guessed the solution early. The episode closes with musings on what makes a “cozy” mystery, a reminder of the importance of community—fictional or otherwise—and a promise to handle Quebecois feedback on their pronunciations with grace.

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Selected Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• “His particular set of skills is listening... being an active listener, putting people at ease, not letting anything escape his notice.”
  — Andrew (37:47)

• “Jane painted his weird little stick figure in such a way that everybody would be able to look at it and also figure it out. That’s the power of art, baby.”
  — Andrew (74:05)

• “Try to keep this kid from going down a bad path. Try to give him a route to be himself.”
  — Andrew (75:35)

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This episode is a thorough, spoiler-rich guide to Still Life—perfect for listeners who want to understand its plot and appeal, or fans curious about how cozy mysteries can be simultaneously comforting and deeply meaningful.

Transcript

[Andrew]

This is a Headgun podcast.

[Craig]

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[Andrew]

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[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

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[Craig]

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[Andrew]

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[Craig]

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[Andrew]

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[Craig]

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[Andrew]

I did? Yeah.

[Craig]

I bought a.

[Andrew]

Bought an anniversary gift for my wife. A nice little limoncello making kit to remind her of a vacation that we had taken together several years before in more innocent and carefree times.

[Craig]

Yes, that is.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

Oh.

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[Andrew]

Away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary.

[Craig]

Plus, these are books you should have read by now. Welcome to Overdue, a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

There has been, how you say, emer there in my village, in my.

[Craig]

Soccer bl.

[Andrew]

That was all I had for an intro. That was. That's what I've got.

[Craig]

Great. We are north of the border here. The blustery winds of Quebec are blowing. I don't know if it's windy up there. I've never been to Quebec.

[Andrew]

It was. I mean, it's windy for a bit in this. At the end of this book, there's like a hurricane blows up.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

This is a book podcast where each week one of us reads a book and tells the other person about it. Andrew has never read this book before. I have never read it. Andrew, what book did you read?

[Andrew]

I read Still Life by Louise Penny. This is the first entry in a long running series about the Quebecois inspector Armand Gamache.

[Craig]

Good work not saying the d. Did you listen to our friend?

[Andrew]

Oh, I did listen to that guy, what's his name? I linked a video.

[Craig]

Julian, Miguel.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I did listen to that guy who sounds like he's making fun of the French. But I think that he is offering because I can't tell if he's a guy who actually has that accent or if he's a guy who just sounds like us but puts that accent on for our benefit to like give himself credibility.

[Craig]

I can't remember if it was the. The Surete de Quebec or Quebec, Excuse me. Or the Armand Gamache one where he's like, this one is easy. I mean, it is not easy, but it is easy.

[Andrew]

He does just sound like a cartoon, like a cartoon rat from France.

[Craig]

But no, this is number one in what I believe is now a 20 book series.

[Andrew]

Yeah, she's written a bunch of these.

[Craig]

It's been going for a while that by Louise Penny. She is this kind of like Canada's Agatha Christie at this point. Very excited to talk about these books that I've never heard of.

[Andrew]

I've never heard of them either. I found them on a good, a good winter reads list. And this is, this is very Cozy Village mystery. I did not look, I did not look up a dictionary definition of Cozy Village mystery because I didn't want my own. The definition that I'm going to volunteer to be like sullied by, by the popular cons. But I do like, it does have all the hallmarks of like, it's a, it's a tight knit community. There's a murder. Everybody knows everybody. So it could be anybody.

[Craig]

Yeah, Twin pieces.

[Andrew]

But it, but it's unimaginable that it could be anybody also because everybody thinks they know each other.

[Craig]

Oh, yes, yes. So Louise Penny, we'll talk about her first and then we'll talk about the book. She was born in 1958. She is now a member of the Order of Canada and the National Order of Quebec or she's an officer of the National Order. She's won multiple Agatha and Anthony awards, nominated for and won all manner of other genre award for her work. She moved as a kid, moved from Toronto to Quebec as a Kid. Because of her father's work as a kid. And I just kept saying it.

[Andrew]

I forgot you kept saying as a kid.

[Craig]

The second time was by accident. The third time was on purpose. It's a joke now. And she loved it there. And she went to school for journalism, radio and television at Ryerson Polytechnic Institute, now Toronto Metropolitan University. And she did that for about 18 to 20 years, was a journalist and host for CBC Radio. And she left in 1996 to take up writing. She had struggled with alcohol a lot in her life. Finally got sober, and she had gotten married. And her husband was like, you gotta stop with the journalism train. You gotta do what you want to do. She gave an interview. I'm trying to remember which of the ones I read it was. It was with Time magazine where she talked about always wanting to be a novelist, but that journalist was the side road because she was too scared to try. She was worried that it wouldn't work. And also that if it wouldn't work, that meant that she couldn't. Then that meant she couldn't go try it later anymore. Like, once you actually commit to trying it, then you don't get to wait to try it anymore. Right.

[Andrew]

Again, it can't be. It can't be a. It can no longer be a thing that you can convince yourself that you would be great at if you would just go and try it. Yes. You actually have to find out one way or the other whether that's right or not. And that's a very scary thing. Yes, I understand that completely.

[Craig]

She also cites this line from W.H. auden in his elegy to Yeats. Yeats, Yeats.

[Andrew]

Anyway, he says, throw this guy at the window.

[Craig]

Ireland hurt him. I think it's Yates hurt him into poetry. Meaning that she kind of, when she was a younger person, right out of college, and maybe thinking about writing, maybe didn't have a lot to write about. Her own estimation, and she says, quote, I had to be hurt into novel writing. I had to get to a certain stage. I had to lose enough people. I had to have a lot of ego pounded out of me and pride. I had to learn compassion. I had to do enough vile things that I hated myself and then was forgiven so that I had something to write about that wasn't about how other people perceived me. So that's her thinking of herself, you know, artistically and with some introspection about why she would go into writing. She also was working. It took her five years. She was working on historical fiction, like a lot of people. I Think we've talked about lately are like, I want to write about history. And then they can't figure it out. And then they write, like, an amazing work of genre fiction.

[Andrew]

Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's.

[Craig]

It's.

[Andrew]

His history has a lot of cool stories in it, and it makes you. And you can read about the way it actually went. And it's pretty easy to be like, what if I just wrote fic about this?

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

To make it go the way that I think it should go.

[Craig]

Yep. And she was reminded of the, you know, golden age of mystery books that she loved as a kid and decided that she would write something that she would have wanted to read filled with people that she would like to spend time with.

[Andrew]

I was kind of astounded this came out in 2015. Like, not just because there have been.

[Craig]

You mean 2005.

[Andrew]

Oh, well, the. The paper. The Amazon paperback says 2015.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

But I guess then it does say Anthony Award winner, 2007, which would be. Okay, you can. You can. Now we can leave it in. We'll leave it in. I didn't. I finished this book, like, two hours ago. I did not have time to do any research, But I was thinking it had early 2000s vibes because of the state of, like, what cell phone technology was like, which is that it existed, but it didn't run anybody's lives.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Which feels the early 2000s to me.

[Craig]

No, it is a very early 2000s novel in multiple. Okay, well, let me just talk about where the book comes from first.

[Andrew]

I would love for you. From the pen of Louise Penny is where.

[Craig]

Hey. She can't get it published. She's written this novel. She thinks it's pretty good, and she submits it ultimately to a contest, the debut Dagger competition, one of the various mystery award groups.

[Andrew]

Everybody comes up to her and is like, man, this is a very nice book, but this is a knife contest.

[Craig]

Yeah. Weird. Who's this lady? And this is specifically a contest for, you know, unpublished authors. She gets second place out of 800 submissions.

[Andrew]

That's pretty good.

[Craig]

Pretty good.

[Andrew]

I know. Second place is first loser, but out of 800 is still pretty good.

[Craig]

And so then that lands her a book deal out of the notoriety from that you asked me, Andrew. It was originally published in English. I do not believe that the, like, Quebecois French version was published until 2010.

[Andrew]

That's interesting because.

[Craig]

Because five years later, I suppose the.

[Andrew]

Book seems so, like, it makes a really big deal of being, like, of. Of Quebec.

[Craig]

Well, she loves. She loves Quebec. She you know, settled there after her 20 years as a journalist. On purpose.

[Andrew]

Well, and obviously, you know, English and French do both happen there. There's a very funny description of Quebec in the. In the book from Gamache's perspective, where he notes. I think it's him. He notes that Quebec is an idea that works in reality, but not on paper.

[Craig]

Oh, sure.

[Andrew]

Just because of the mixing of different cultures. And then there's. There's one guy in here who's really whiny about, like, oh, I. As an English speaker, I feel persecuted here in Quebec because of all the Francophones.

[Craig]

Well, what did she say? She said in one. I think it was the New York Times interview that Quebec had, as you know, had an English minority surrounded by a French majority who were themselves eclipsed by the English majority in the rest of the country. So in Quebec, everyone defines themselves as the other, creating a sense of alienation that both inspired and repelled.

[Andrew]

Yeah, and there's that. That same character mentions a. Talking about how he feels like his. His rights are under attack. Mentions a recent independence referendum that came 95. And that. Yeah, that feels more like a 90s, early 2000s thing, because I think that that. Not that there isn't still like, a large block of support for that, but I think that that is not as much of a thing now as it was 20 years ago.

[Craig]

From my limited research on it for this episode. I think we've talked about it in prior episodes. The 95 referendum was bananas. How close it was. It was like, within two points. Within a point, but it fails. And then I think thereafter, they kind of changed the rules on how it would work to require a little bit more legislation. And. But. But something that I did kind of just. I don't even really have notes on this. I just found. Fell down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. I have a tab open for Pasta Gate, which is a. A 2013 incident in Quebec where there was an inspector of the oki.

[Andrew]

Was it our Gamache?

[Craig]

No, these are the inspectors who work for the French language department because there are very official rules in Quebec about what languages you can use and, like, in what ways. And he went into a Montreal restaurant. Montreal voted very heavily against secession in 95.

[Andrew]

For.

[Craig]

For what it's worth. And they used Italian words such as pasta, antipasti and calamari on the menu. And that was against the rules.

[Andrew]

Mon dieu.

[Craig]

And that they. They. I think the ultimate. This led to the resignation of the person who led this department. It's just. And they're like, even around the writing of this book, there were revisions to the language law happening in the late 90s and early 2000s. So, like, I don't think you can exist in Quebec and not be very aware of whether or not you like to speak French.

[Andrew]

Sure, yeah. I mean, as far as what's in. What's in the book that most of the French is. I think you are meant to understand a lot of the time that characters are speaking in French to each other.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

But in terms of what is French on the page, it's mostly someone will pick up the phone and be like, oui.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

It's all very, like, incidental and words that people will generally know, even if they don't know any French.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

Which doesn't describe us because we're fluent, but I think it describes a lot.

[Craig]

Of fluency, a lot of readers, as you can tell. So all these books in this series are set in a community called Three Pines, or at least most of them are. Three Pines is the town that she created. Yep. And she talks about it as a place that's very comfortable and comforting, which is perhaps ironic, given that it is a murder haven.

[Andrew]

Yeah. My, my, my. I wrote myself a little dramatis personnel at the. At in my notes. And my description of Three Pines is a small fictitious village is populated mostly artists, cafe owners, murderers and murder victims. I think that captures.

[Craig]

How is the rent so dang high.

[Andrew]

We are getting to only murders in the building levels of, like, dead bodies per capita.

[Craig]

It was an interview with Strand magazine where I first saw it, but she mentions it again in Time magazine. I was a little unprepared for this, but given the 2005 publication date, I guess it makes sense. She was talking about this community of Three Pines, so. So that was really important for me to have. And it actually coincided with 9 11, oddly enough, where I know no Canadian could ever feel as traumatized by what happened as Americans and certainly as New Yorkers. But it affected the whole world where we realized that no place is safe. And I wanted to create a sense of safety at the same time. The other thing 911 taught us is that physical safety is an illusion. Even in Three Pines, nowhere is actually physically safe. So you could never guarantee that, but you could guarantee a sort of emotional safety. And that's. You know, she goes on to say, that's a thing that everybody wants and I do. There is that musical I've never seen called Come From Away, where the one plane gets rerouted to a place in Canada.

[Andrew]

I thought I saw that with Zeus.

[Craig]

It's supposed to be very good.

[Andrew]

I enjoyed it. Yeah. It's not one that I went and, like, sought out the soundtrack for after, but I. But I had a good time with it.

[Craig]

Yes. I was watching it and so. And she talks about that in a couple different interviews. And obviously she was a reporter and, you know, very invested in world affairs and it's a neighboring country and makes sense that she's like, huh, what if? What if? Just a cozy little place, but also we get to have fun. Murder mysteries.

[Andrew]

I like that. I like the thought that you would have to be geographically adjacent to America to have to be like, oh, the affairs of this. This. No, it's just this small neighboring country next to me.

[Craig]

I wonder what they're going to get up. Unsettled from a safety perspective, I think is what I meant. But fair enough. Fair note. Fair note. The series has run for 20 years, 20 books. The most recent book, the Black Wolf, was scheduled to tour in the US for its release, but she canceled all of her appearances after Donald Trump's tariff threats and other behaviors.

[Andrew]

Weird. What is it about just randomly detaining foreigners from every country that makes fore. Foreigner so scared to come here? I don't understand.

[Craig]

Moved the launch of her tour out of the Kennedy center specifically because he named himself the head of the Kennedy Center.

[Andrew]

Man. All right. I mean, good job, Louise. Penny.

[Craig]

But speaking of presidents, though, Andrew, things don't have to be this way, I don't think. You know, at this point, I'm just running down my odds and ends here. That Inspector Gamache, whose whole deal is that he is a murder detective. A homicide detective.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

But he's kind of an optimist. He's kind of philosophizing. Nice guy. I understand it. He.

[Andrew]

He has got a. His deal is that he. With the people who work directly with him and have been mentored by him, all understand him to be a very intelligent, upstanding sort of guy. But his. He is kind of topped out in the organization.

[Craig]

Oh, okay. Sure.

[Andrew]

Yeah. I like that of the Charettes. Duke.

[Craig]

Surete. Excuse me.

[Andrew]

Sure. A tay. Sorry.

[Craig]

Du Quebec.

[Andrew]

And at the beginning of this book, it's.

[Craig]

I just can't imagine anyone from Quebec listens to us. France. Yes, they must.

[Andrew]

No, they must. They must. They must. They must. And we love them. Thank you. Thank you so much.

[Craig]

I know there are plenty of Canadians who. Listen. I don't know.

[Andrew]

Listen. Some of them got to be from Quebec. Some of them got to be. And we're gonna get some. Some. Hopefully messages out of this episode. But he is a homicide detective who still is not. Is not used to. He still does not. He's not used to being called about a murder having happened.

[Craig]

He still finds it unsettling.

[Andrew]

Yeah, he's still. He's not become jaded and deadened to, to this whole homicide thing, which is usually the trope.

[Craig]

Right. It's like they're. They're dead and. And then. But this one is the one that is like so shocking. Or. Or then they get paired with a rookie who's shocked or like, you know.

[Andrew]

An author like Armando Mash gets paired with a rookie but she sucks so bad that it's like as I understand it, it's sort of controversial within the.

[Craig]

Oh, wow.

[Andrew]

Within the series. That sucks.

[Craig]

Just other notes on the rest of the series. She after like the first five books are kind of her imitating just kind of that golden age of Christie and Dorothy Sayers. And then she does make the books a little bit more connected to present day events as the series goes on. There's even a book, I think it's book 17 or 18 that has references to Covid and like some pretty terrible like triage politics policy about like maybe we just need to let some people die stuff where I think. I don't know if it's in this book. There's a phrase all shall be well, which is apparently a. A phrase that Armand likes or. Or would go on to use or.

[Andrew]

It might come up. I don't remember being. But of this.

[Craig]

But yeah, it's not. This is not the only place that would use a phrase like that. But it did like pop up in Canada with like as a. A sticker of just like we're gonna get through this like during COVID And she, you know, found that moving. And then you had a terrible politician use it as a, you know, perversion of that message in her book. And then Andrew, another political connection, another presidential connection in 2021, she co authors a book with a fan. She gets a fan letter after the death of her husband in 2016. The fan is it Barack Hussein Obama? Hillary Rodham Clinton.

[Andrew]

Oh boy.

[Craig]

Writes her a letter of condolences after the passage of her husband, which is apparently, you know, a huge ordeal for her. And she credits her career to him. And they have a correspondence, they become friends and then they co author a book called State of Terror, a mystery of sorts. And Armand Gamache appears in it briefly. He's in it.

[Andrew]

Well, Pokemon go to the presses with this one is what I have to say about Took a village to write this book. There was. I understand it.

[Craig]

Oh, boy, there was. So I'm with Louise Penny there. There was a television movie of this book made in 2013 called Still Life, a Three Pines mystery. And there was an Amazon miniseries that aired in 2022 called Three Pines, starring Alfred Molina. She worked on it a little bit.

[Andrew]

Dr. Octopus himself.

[Craig]

They also hired a lot of indigenous folks to work on it. They decided to make the plot about the residential schools and like the hundreds of thousands of first nations folks who were conscript. Conscripted into these schools.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

And they brought on a lot of indigenous folks to work on it, which she thought was cool. She did find that Three Pines as a character got sidelined, like the community as character thing that defines a lot of these series.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Got a little pushed to the side, but she thought that the work was still interesting. It was not renewed for a second season, which means it's just a miniseries now.

[Andrew]

Just think, you know, that sounds like an interesting take on the material because that is not a thread in here at all.

[Craig]

Yeah. And I don't know which of the later novels, if at all, kind of deal with that, but it seemed like a. We're making this in 2020, 21, like to air in 22. We should probably deal with that.

[Andrew]

We should probably make it woke.

[Craig]

Yeah, probably make it woke. Speaking of waking up, let's take a break and then I can't wait to hear about the mystery at the heart of this book.

[Andrew]

Craig, I'm sure you're wondering why I've brought my magnifying glass in my Sherlock Holmes hat to the recording of this ad segment.

[Craig]

I am wondering this, and it's because.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

A real who coded it mystery.

[Andrew]

It's a. It's a real w. Done.

[Craig]

It.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

Get out of our way.

[Andrew]

They don't Say that in a copy. I'm just reading between the lines. But I think if you know code, they would like you not to know it anymore because they have it taken care of. They do, yeah. Here's some things Craig, that we like, you and I about Squarespace.

[Craig]

Tell me what I like about Squarespace.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

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[Andrew]

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[Craig]

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[Andrew]

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[Craig]

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[Andrew]

Miss Jane Neal met her maker in the early morning mist of Thanksgiving Sunday. Now, this is. This is Canadian Thanksgiving, so I don't actually know when on the Sometime in October, I think. Sure. It was pretty much a surprise all around. Ms. Neil's was not a natural death, unless you're of the belief everything happens as it's supposed to. If so, for her 76 years, Jane Neal had been walking toward this final moment when death met her in the brilliant maple woods on the verge of the Village of Three Pines. She'd fallen spread eagled, as though making angels in the bright and brittle leaves. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the. Wait, could you give me the Police of the Surute du Quebec knelt down, his knees cracking like the report of a hunter's rifle, his large expressive hands hovering over the tiny circle of blood marring her fluffy cardigan. As though, like a magician, he could remove the wound and restore the woman. But he could not. That wasn't his gift. Fortunately for Gamache, he had others. The scent of mothballs, his grandmother's perfume, met him halfway. Jane's, gentle and kindly. I stared as though surprised to see him. This is how we're introduced to our murder victim and Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.

[Craig]

Classic. A dead body is found.

[Andrew]

Yeah, someone's dead.

[Craig]

Lady's dead.

[Andrew]

She's dead as can be.

[Craig]

This. So one of the other things I read about this series, that it is not particularly gory or, like, spooky scary. Like.

[Andrew]

No, there's. No, there's not a lot of that. Like, one person is briefly in danger, but you are not spending a lot of time on the. On the gore of things.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Even to take an example that everyone will be familiar with, just like take the cold open to your average episode of the TV show Bones where a child or a man or a woman or a dog or somebody else finds some bones and they still have some of their skin or muscle on. And then like, the first, like, third of the episode of Bones is like, how are we gonna get the skin and stuff off these bones? You're not going to see any. Any. Anything to that degree in this book, I don't think. Yeah.

[Craig]

Which makes it feel way like really Agatha Christie to me. Which is like people get murdered by like, a thing. Bonks them on the head.

[Andrew]

Yeah. They get hit on the head with a giant mallet and then they're dead.

[Craig]

And then they're dead. Which is fine because it's mostly about the mystery of who and why and how and when.

[Andrew]

I mean, for a murderer, you're taking a huge risk when you kill somebody that way, because either you're gonna kill them or you're gonna give them amnesia that can only be cured by bonking them on the head again with the same giant hammer.

[Craig]

Or you're gonna turn them into a cartoon accordion and then they make cool sounds that give you away.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

You know, depending on the size of your mallet, I suppose.

[Andrew]

Yeah. It's all about the. The relative size of the mallet to. To person.

[Craig]

Okay, so what happens after this cold open? Are we like that. Is it like a B roll of this community and how sleepy it is.

[Andrew]

Or we get zapped back a little bit to Chief Inspector Armand giving the call that. That a murder has happened. This is when we learn that he. He is the homicide detective with a heart of gold who still does not like getting. He's not used to getting that murder call. He just doesn't like thinking about people being murdered.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

We don't spend a lot of time with his wife in this book, but he is, we are led to believe that he is a consummate wife guy. He loves his wife. He tells his wife everything all the time, and she tells him everything also. Now we do not ever this. The book has a really sort of fluid sense of perspective. Like, I think the. The narrator, whoever they are, can sort of inhabit any head in a scene.

[Craig]

Nice.

[Andrew]

So we don't. It's not like, you know, you get a perspective from this person for a chapter and then from this person for a chapter. Or, like, every perspective is separated by paragraph break or something.

[Craig]

Using, like, chapter breaks to obscure information.

[Andrew]

You're just jumping around. So you never do get to inhabit Gamache's wife's head. So you don't. You don't know whether she's telling him everything. But it's not important for this first book. They're just. They're just super close. But she's not around because he. Investigating a murder.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And they love each other so much.

[Craig]

Great.

[Andrew]

And he's such a bit. He loves.

[Craig]

Does he live in this town?

[Andrew]

About his wife and talking about his life. No, Craig, he lives in Quebec. He lives in Montreal.

[Craig]

Okay. Quebec is a province.

[Andrew]

So Quebec is a province. No, he lived. No, he doesn't live in Three Pines.

[Craig]

Okay, okay, okay.

[Andrew]

But he does feel at home in this. In this little sleepy village where he comes and he has to know everybody's secrets. He likes. He comes in, he rolls into town, and he's like, any secrets that you have, I'm gonna know them because I'm the inspector, and if they're not relevant to this crime, they're gonna die with me. But if they are relevant to this crime, watch out.

[Craig]

Whoa.

[Andrew]

Zymar. Manga mash.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

He's sort of an avuncular figure who. This is not a word that's used in the book, but it's a word that I like a lot, so I'm gonna use it. An avuncular figure who puts everybody at ease. Mostly everybody. Like, everybody likes everybody is. Is put at ease by his manner. He seems like a very competent sort of person. He's the kind of guy you don't want to disappoint.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

I see your arms moving at the keyboard.

[Craig]

I was just wondering what avuncular means.

[Andrew]

That you have, like, a. The quality of an uncle.

[Craig]

I get the connotation.

[Andrew]

What.

[Craig]

What did you find that is of relating to an uncle. Yeah, but it kind of means, like, your cool uncle. It means in the way that, like, you know, Mom, Donnie had an aunt kind of thing. Like, we just. It's just an uncle.

[Andrew]

Yeah, literally your uncle.

[Craig]

It's your unc. You're a vunk somebody.

[Andrew]

I mean, somebody called the New York Post. This guy's not literally everybody's uncle, but he has an avuncular. Energy that puts everybody at ease.

[Craig]

Okay, does he have any, like. Does this book get into. Does he have, like, a particular crime solving skill set or way of working?

[Andrew]

His particular set of skills is not to get superpowers when his daughter is taken, but it is to. It is. It's listening. It is. It is observing. It is being an active listener, putting people at ease, not letting anything escape his notice.

[Craig]

Mm.

[Andrew]

And generally being sort of a pleasant, open guy. But then when he is disappointed in you or asking, like, interrogating you in an appointed way, you are like, oh, no, I do not like the feel. I do not like the way that this feels.

[Craig]

Oh, no. My unc is talking to me in a way that makes me feel like I need to spill the beans.

[Andrew]

Talking to me, and I don't like it. So, I mean, what. So, okay, we have opened on the murder scene, you know, a little bit about Chief Inspector Arman Ghmach. We talked before the break about. About the. The kind of character he is. He's not used to. It's not even that he's not used to. It's just that he hasn't lost the. The. I don't. I don't think awe is the right word, but he's not. He's not jaded. He's not. He is not immune to, like, the horror of a murder scene.

[Craig]

Well, and everything that I read from her in interviews is that, you know, she is, you know, at this point in her life, an optimist. That's wild. Or at least, I mean.

[Andrew]

I mean, I'll respect. Respect to her for that.

[Craig]

I guess maybe it wants to be because. Because she described, like, in writing these books, she wanted to write a community that she would want to spend time with. She wanted to write a character that she would marry. Like, she. She says Gamache is. She says Gamache is, like, in. In no small part based on her husband. The type. You know, the types of qualities she cares about in a person. And a lot of that is this faith in humanity, this optimism. And I think that's kind of what you're getting at, which is like, he's not. He's not the. The cop who is like, Daniel Plainview about it. Everyone is terrible.

[Andrew]

If somebody you knew and loved was murdered, this is the cop that you would want to show up.

[Craig]

Yeah. Yeah. Great. Good way to put it. Good way to put it. Yep.

[Andrew]

Great. So do you want to just, like, run down car, tell me about Three.

[Craig]

Pines and the people who live there?

[Andrew]

Three Pines is a is a small village, as I said, that's. It's a lot of artists here, a lot of cafe owners, a lot of one person who's killed and at least one person who killed them. We don't know who it is for a while, but I mean, I figured it out pretty early. It's got, it's got a classic murder mystery structure where you talk to a lot of people, you are led to suspect people pretty early on for like the first half or two thirds of the book who do not end up having done it. And it turns out that the person who did it all along is like the second or third person that you talk to all along. Yes, but let's, let's talk about the other people in the force with Inspector Gamache. First, we've got Jean Guy Beauvoir. He is Gamache's trusted second in command. Zhangui Beauvoir.

[Craig]

Okay, great.

[Andrew]

Yeah, Beauvoir. Maybe.

[Craig]

No, no, I like it. I actually, I have no notes. It's just fun to hear you say it.

[Andrew]

Jean Guy Beauvoir.

[Craig]

Uh huh.

[Andrew]

My memoir. He's Gamash's trusted second in command, a man who does not like to wear his feelings on his sleeve. But they have a couple of interactions where it's clear that their mutual respect borders on a sort of affection or love even not, not in any kind of romantic way, but just in a way where they carry each care about each other very much. Listen, it's books, like everybody's gay in books. I just, I just wanted to make, make it clear that these two characters weren't. There's Yvette Nicole, who is, is complicated about Yvette. She's a young woman, relatively new to the department, who thinks she has a tragic backstory, but she doesn't.

[Craig]

That's great.

[Andrew]

The way that you're introduced to this young woman is you're in her head and you're like, we immigrated here from somewhere and we, we. We were fleeing persecution in some other country. And now here I am, I'm an inspector. I'm an inspector with the police force in Quebec. And then the very next thing that you get is like her dad who lives with her being like, man, I lied to this poor girl about how persecuted we were and about how much her Uncle Saul sucked and about everything that she has to live up to. Like, I just lied and lied and I did not and I haven't come clean. And now she's carrying around all this stuff in her and I don't know how to tell her about it. And this is just how she has to live her life. And this character, I mean, I'm led to. I believe she comes back in future books, in the. In the series. In this book, she's built to suck pretty much like she is. The first scene that you get with her, she is. She is trying to impress Gamache. She has brought him a Tim Hortons, you know, like a pastry and a coffee.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

He says something at some point where it's like, I can walk into an opera house for a show and if I smell Tim Hortons coffee, I'm gonna start looking for the body. Like, he just associates that sort of fast food coffee with being on an investigation.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

So she impresses him right out of the gate. But then she, like, she's excited to work with him until he begins to expect things of her and like, ask her to do so stuff. And she doesn't understand, like, why is this man telling me to take notes? Why is he asking me to listen? Like, why is he. Why is he trying to make me do all the stuff that I think is stupid? And the whole rest of the book is just her sort of misdiagnosing different situations and acting like she knows stuff that she doesn't know and totally fundamentally misunderstanding every lesson that he tries to teach her. And from the perspective of the fan base, I think the controversy is like, is this woman on the autism spectrum somewhere? Okay, I think that that's a common interpretation. Does it suck that Louise Penny made this like 25 year old young woman suck? Built, built, literally built this person to be disappointing, to disappoint everyone around her and to be snotty and to be awful. There is. There's one sequence in the book where she's in. Everybody in this. In this town is an artist. They're all quoting literature to each other back and forth. They all love symbolism and illusion and all this stuff. She's in somebody's house, she goes into their bathroom. Their mirror has something written on it that says, you are the problem. And what would you think that that would mean if you went into a bathroom that's all mirror with that written on it? Craig, what would you assume that the person was trying to say that.

[Craig]

That I was the problem?

[Andrew]

Yeah, because you're the one looking in the mirror. Because that's what mirrors are for. Right. But Yvette Nicole is like. Starts looking behind her like, is it the shampoo? Is it the soap? Like, what is it that's in the view of this mirror that is the problem, because it couldn't be me.

[Craig]

Oh, no.

[Andrew]

And that's her whole thing throughout the whole book is that it's everybody's fault but hers. Everybody sucks but me. This whole thing is stupid. This inspector is, is renowned and I was excited to work with him, but he seems like he's really losing it. And I hate it and I hate him and everything sucks. And it's. She doesn't even get any kind of redemption arc or anything. There's no, like, closed loop on her story. It's just she sucks and she exists to disappoint everybody and she doesn't work well on the team. And I think in later books she is reassigned in a way that makes her useful. But in this book, her. The whole point of her is to just be incompetent. And on one, like, on one hand, I was, I mean, talking about Bones. If you talk about Law and Order, like any crime procedural, like everybody on, like everybody in your regular cast, right, is fundamentally, like, well intentioned and competent. And even if you have like a rookie character, they are like, I'm here to learn. I'm gonna recognize when my hot headedness has, like, caused problems. I'm gonna acknowledge that and I'm gonna learn and grow. And my learning and growing is going to be part of, like the arc of what this, the series is. Yvette. Yvette Nicole does not have any of that. Like, she just sucks.

[Craig]

So.

[Andrew]

And that's her whole. That's what she gets to do is be terrible.

[Craig]

As you are reading this, I'm reminded I was on the gamache series.com website. It is not an official Louise Penny website.

[Andrew]

But it is because it's dot com, right?

[Craig]

Well, it would be, it would be.

[Andrew]

It would be dossier if it was an official.

[Craig]

Oh, you might be right about that.

[Andrew]

I don't know. I'm just making that up.

[Craig]

It is. I think it might be related to Minotaur books, which. Which has done some of her publishing for a while.

[Andrew]

Okay, fine, sure. I just, I'm just. I would, I would think it was more out there, authoritative, if Fair enough.

[Craig]

But the person writing this, this blog post read an interview with her and her publisher where Penny said that she identified with agent Yvette Nicole and then cites a fair. A paragraph from the acknowledgments in still life quote, I went through a period in my life when I had no friends, when the phone never rang, when I thought I would die from loneliness. I know that the real blessing here isn't That I have a book published, but I have so many people to thank. And so hearing about this terrible person.

[Andrew]

Who nobody likes, it's not like you don't want to like her. You do want to like her. You just want to shake her and be like, why do you keep making the wrong decisions in every. In every case? Like, the Zhangi Beauvoir says to Gamache at one point that she takes advice, like, criticism, and she takes criticism as though it is the end of the world.

[Craig]

World.

[Andrew]

Like, I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but again, like, her. Her response to. To being mentored, even though she is ostensibly excited to be mentored, is to kind of, like, totally shut down and stop listening to this guy.

[Craig]

This. This, to me, all, like, it is not a stretch. I've never read these series. I've never talked to Louise Peny, but this does not feel like a stretch to say that perhaps she is like, you know, someone who got sober after a lot of trauma in her life and. And is like, who was I at 25? Let me think about the type of person I was.

[Andrew]

Well, then there's. There's even, like, this is the kind of person I. I worry that I am.

[Craig]

Yeah. In my worst moments.

[Andrew]

And, like, maybe there's some truth to it and maybe there's not, but you're.

[Craig]

Right, it does maybe stick out. What. Depending on the level of grace she extends to other characters, is what.

[Andrew]

I talked about her a lot. She's, like, barely relevant to the story of this, but she only shows up to, like, suck and then disappear.

[Craig]

Okay, but. But, oh, the other thing. You said that. That as her learning on long wrong lessons from him. It sort of sounded like she serves a. A bit of a role to, like, let us know how Gamache works if he has to explain himself to her a bunch. Right. Does that sound like that's what she's there for? That is.

[Andrew]

That is literally what she's there for. So she. He. He says to her, he takes her aside at an early meeting, and he says, you know, all of our lives are a collection of, like, choices that we make. You need to learn that you have choices. He says there are four things that lead to wisdom. You ready for them? She nodded, wondering when the police work would begin. And you already see here, like, she's. She's impatient. She's not going to learn these bedrock lessons.

[Craig]

That is he sitting backwards on a chair at this.

[Andrew]

I don't think that he is rapping with her in that sort of way, but I think it's implied.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

There are four sentences we learn to say and mean. Gamache held up his hand as a fist and raised a finger with each point. I don't know. I need help. I'm sorry. And one other. Gamache thought for a moment but couldn't bring it to mind. I forget. But we'll talk more about it tonight. Right? And she's so rock stupid that she thinks the fourth thing that she's meant to learn from this is I forget.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

When clearly he is saying to her, I forget what the fourth thing is, but I'll tell you about it later.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And so she literally. She has a conversation later where she's running through these four things, and she says something dumb. And he says, I'm sorry, like in an excuse me kind of way. And he's. And she's like, yeah, he said the thing. Yeah, I'm doing it. Right. And then she says that she forgets something. And he gives her a look like she's an idiot because she's being an idiot.

[Craig]

Oh, man.

[Andrew]

And she's like, yeah, I really aced that because I said. I said the four things, including I forget the four things that he told me were so important.

[Craig]

Take me through this town. I feel like we've met no one. I'm so sorry.

[Andrew]

It's fine. It's. I had a lot. I. I did write in my dramatis person. I. It's complicated with three exclamation points. I figured it would take a minute. Okay, you got Jane Neal. She's a murder victim. She's a local artist and teacher. Shortly before being murdered, she submits her first painting to a local art festival. She has done art all of her life, but she's never shown anybody it. She has a house that she lives in, but she has never invited anybody past the foyer. Pretty much like she has a couple rooms that she entertains in, but nobody gets to go to the bedroom. Nobody gets to go to the living room. Everybody thinks it's weird, but it's just part of Jane's thing. So nobody, you know, asks her a lot of questions about it, but she has. She is. Submits her first painting to this festival. It's weird and bad, but also striking and arresting, like people can't decide how they feel about it. The fact that she submits this finally, like, a week before she gets killed may or may not be coincidental. We're fine. We'll find out some more. Clara Morrow is the adoptive daughter of sorts to Jane. She's also an artist who's achieved only limited success. She is married to Peter Morrow, who is a persnickety guy who's frequently depicted as cold and unreasonable. It's not that he doesn't care about Clara, but he does wander pretty frequently within the first week after Jane's death when Clara is just gonna get over it. He is more successful, like financially, commercially, critically as an artist. But he works at a rate that ensures they are living pretty frugally. They do not have a lot of money, Peter and Clara. Ben Hadley is Peter's best friend. They go way back to boarding school. They've been friends for years and years and years. He has a stinky dog, he is of English stock and he feels vaguely persecuted by the French speaking kea. His mother, Timur Hadley, died suddenly, but not expectedly, not unexpectedly. She has. She had cancer and she was. She was gonna die of the cancer, but the. The actual day that she died, people kind of note that she seemed like she was having a. Having an update.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And it's, you know, it's. Is it suspicious? I don't know. But we are going to inspect it as part of this book. That's the thing.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Matthew Croft. He's an employee of the local department of transportation. Basically, he's in charge of fixing the roads. He had once hunted illegally on Jane's land and she chewed him out for it. At a town meeting about the death, he volunteers to tell Gamache and everybody else on the force a lot about bow hunting and archery since that. That seems to be how Jane was killed. She has a very distinctive wound. It goes all the way through her body. That seems consistent with a. A. Like a hunting arrowhead, specifically, not like a training arrowhead, but like a hunting arrow.

[Craig]

Oh.

[Andrew]

And then his wife and child, his son, his 14 year old son Philippe, they end up being more involved than he knows. Initially. There is Yolande Fontaine. She's the estranged niece of Jane and is a real piece of work.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

She wears a lot of makeup. She's an unscrupulous real estate agent and it just seems like her whole life is facade. Somebody compares her to the old like Hollywood Western sets that are just the front and if you look behind them, there's nothing back.

[Craig]

Oh, a Potemkin village of a person. Sure. Yes.

[Andrew]

She has a fail husband and a fail son. Their names are not important.

[Craig]

Fail and fail junior.

[Andrew]

Ruth Zardo.

[Craig]

Great.

[Andrew]

No, I know you're thinking that she must be a little animatronic swami person who lives inside A fortune telling machine like in the movie Big. But that's not who she is. Ruth Sardo is a mean old lady. A mean old cuss of a lady who does turn out to be a poet of some renowned. But who, it seems like people in town kind of put up with her in spite of herself.

[Craig]

Great.

[Andrew]

Olivier and Gabrie are a gay couple who own the local cafe and restaurant. One is big and one is little. Every couple's got to have a big one and a little one. You know this.

[Craig]

We all just agree to this. That's true.

[Andrew]

Shortly before the book opens, some local teens do a hate crime to their restaurant. And Jane identifies the teens at. Chases them off. These are the most important characters. I think you. I think you can identify within the descriptions that I've given you, like a few reasons that some people might have to. To do a murder.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

I think it's important. So talking about the. The hate crime done against the gay couple, I think it's important to kind of place this book as being in their early 2000s.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

And I think this, this community is broadly accepting of Olivier and Gabri, and they mostly feel like they can be themselves. But if you are a. If you are, say, a young teenage boy and you realize that you are gay, like, you are still gonna have that. That is still going to make you really uncomfortable and like, afraid to. Afraid to come out, afraid to be yourself. Afraid to tell anybody in a way that is relevant to the, to the events of the story.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure. And. And it also is just like an. A interesting social vector for, for the crime to follow along. Right. Where it's like, here are some people who are already doing this other bad thing. Somebody tried to stop them, and then they pay the price for it, which is like, it doesn't have to do with whatever, you know, her background was.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, Gamache shows up to this community and he, he says, you know, she is. She is dead in the woods. There is.

[Craig]

They.

[Andrew]

Nobody can find an arrow. So it, you know, nobody can directly prove that there was foul play, that there was a murder. But it's also a thing where it does seem like somebody like she. She has been shot straight through the heart with an arrow. It is established that this is not a thing that like an amateur would do. Like, it would be so wild for this to be a coincidence.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

That they're gonna treat it as suspicious, just kind of as a, as a de facto thing.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

But where do you want to. Where do you want to go? Like, what's your.

[Craig]

I kind of want to know how he goes about. I will leave to you to decide what you want the listeners to know by the end of the episode. Right.

[Andrew]

I think I am going to end up having to spoil, like, who. Who done it.

[Craig]

Okay. Just.

[Andrew]

I think. I mean, I think it is fairly. If you are acquainted with this type of story at all, I think it'll be fairly obvious, like, who it could be from pretty early on, but just, you know, fair warning. And we have a whole thing at the beginning of the show about new spoilers. But I do think by. By the end, you will know who did it.

[Craig]

I kind of want to know just, like, how he goes about doing the work and kind of how that unfolds. Because it doesn't sound like it's a locked room. It doesn't sound like it's like a let's get the suspects all together type book. So I kind of want to know how it unfolds.

[Andrew]

That's a. That's a good question. So he. He likes to show up and just talk to people and observe how people are behaving, like, who is. Who is acting normally, who's acting differently, like, who. You know, get accounts of. Of what everybody's life is like from. From a bunch of different people and. And compare notes. His whole thing is a lot. A lot of murders are, like, the committing of them is done, like, years and years and years before. Like, it is a. Is a thing that's been set in motion way before the actual events have happened. And so pay attention to what people do and say what they have done and said, like, what. What kind of things they have, like, what kind of people they are. And it can help you put everything together and determine, you know, who is who. Who is guilty, who. Who might be guilty, you know, who. Who to suspect, who to investigate further. And yeah, just. Just keep your head on a swivel. It's his main thing, like, do not impose. And that's the thing that Nicole keeps trying to do is, like, she will keep, like, interrupting people when they're clear, when it would be more. When it would be better for the investigation to just, like, let them stew silently and then let them, like, volunteer the. The like, let them give Gamache and company enough rope to like, hang them with, so to speak. But that. That's his thing is he's just. I'm gonna put people at ease. I'm going to remind them of somebody that they. That they trust. He's not trying to, like, manipulate Anybody. Like, he does have genuine feeling for the people in this town, the people who have been affected by this, the people who he's interrogating and investigating. But just, like, let. Let people volunteer as much information as they will give you and then put together the pieces based on that.

[Craig]

Sure. Is there any sort of, like, time pressure? Is there any sort of, like, it's not like, the day of the big game? Like, it's like.

[Andrew]

No, there is a. The painting of Jane Neal's that was submitted for the art show, like, is slated to be part of the show in a couple weeks. But that's not. That's not a time pressure thing. It's just. We need to figure this out quickly, because if you're going to solve a murder, mostly you're going to solve it, like, pretty quickly before. Before the. The facts on the ground have a lot of change.

[Craig]

It doesn't sound like. It goes like Thriller, though, where he is. Then, like, where they're like a bunch.

[Andrew]

Of zombies come out of the ground. They all do a dance. Yeah.

[Craig]

Where. I'm thinking of Knives out, where, like, it does have kind of the, like, Agatha Christie setup, but then also Daniel Craig is, like, running around this small town and, like, a building is blowing up and, like, somebody is threatening him. And.

[Andrew]

No, there's. There's not a. Like, Like, Gamache fears for his life because he gets a weird note.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Like, thrown through his windows, brick or whatever. Yeah. Yes.

[Craig]

Tell me about the coziness. Then. Like, you said, you had a.

[Andrew]

You know, Gamache, like, he just. He feels very at home in this little place. He sits in the. He sits in the. The cafe, and he has his. You know, he has a coffee. He has a little, like, a licorice pipe. I don't know what that is, but it sounds nice.

[Craig]

Don't know what that is.

[Andrew]

I don't know what that is. I assume people in Quebec know and can and will yell at us. Oh.

[Craig]

Le smoke.

[Andrew]

Un petite smoke.

[Craig]

Trele chic.

[Andrew]

This is really insulting.

[Craig]

It's fine.

[Andrew]

This is. If Mario was French, nobody would blink an eye at any of this stuff because Mario. Mario would always be going, oh.

[Craig]

Mario. Oh, revoir, King Bowser.

[Andrew]

But yeah, it's. He just has. He has little moments with all these characters that, like, brings him closer to them. Like, either. Either, you know, he finds out something about them or, like, in the. In the case of. Of Ruth Zardo, like, she tries to be, like, awful and, like, persnickety to him, and he's like, you Will not treat me this way.

[Craig]

Excuse me.

[Andrew]

I am an inspector with the. With. With the Sir. With the. Whatever. Duke.

[Craig]

Yep. Huh.

[Andrew]

Surte du Quebec. I watched this video a lot of times before we recorded this episode, and the pronunciation just keeps getting further away from my brain.

[Craig]

You also mentioned French English tension. Have we covered versions of that? Does that crop up more here?

[Andrew]

It's mainly with Ben Hadley.

[Craig]

Okay. Okay.

[Andrew]

You know, there are a couple of moments where. Where, like, the history of Quebec comes up. Like when. When you're, like, looking at. When you finally get to look at the interior of. Of Jane's house. Like, you see some very. Some antiques, and it's clear that they have a long history. Like, it's people who had come to Quebec from France and are trying to. To. To import a French style. And it's just the kind of thing that's not done anymore. And so these are, like, effectively priceless antiques.

[Craig]

Like, you.

[Andrew]

You get a lot of stuff about the. The architecture in this village and, like, the kinds of houses, and these are just, like the kinds of buildings that very early settlers would have built. Like, there's a lot of heritage. There's a lot of stuff that now you take care to preserve when you find yourself, like, in possession of these kinds of things because they're so important to, like, the history of Quebec.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

So the. What you. We. We had this town meeting with. With Peter Morrow that I told you about, and it. It turns out that he kind of. He fits a lot of the profile. Like, he. He. It's determined that the arrow that killed Jane Neal had real feathers in the back of it instead of kind of like synthetic feathers. Feathers. So that serves as kind of a fingerprint of sorts. And that he and other people in his family know how to fire the older kind of bow that you would probably be using. They know about, like, the. The. It's called a blind in this book, but I think American people might know it as, like, a deer stand.

[Craig]

Like a place where, you know, like a duck blind. Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

Yeah. There's usually a place where you would hang out and wait for an animal to. To come by so you would. You would. So you could kill it without it being spooked by you.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And they go to the. To Peter Morrow's house, and there's a lot of pretty suspicious stuff there. Like, there's a. There's a fire. Some. Something is being burned in the furnace. They find an arrowhead in there. They find an old, tiny bow that's been used recently sitting by the Furnace, as though someone was trying to destroy it. They find a quiver that is supposed to have six that has like an. It has five arrows in it, but then an indentation where a sixth arrow would have been very recently. And it's a specific kind of, you know, older wooden arrow instead of like a synthetic thing. And it has the real feathers. And so, you know, Peter Morrow is high up on the list of suspects.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And this. This ends up being the, like, the people who didn't do it red herring kind of thing of the book is you. You go and you are led to believe that Pierre or Philippe, the son who was doing a hate crime to. To the cafe owners at the beginning of the book, who Jane sort of snuck up on and scared away like, that. He has been having a real rough time for, like, six months or so. Like, he used to have good grades, and now his grades are slipping. And he used to, you know, love his parents, and he has been really, like, standoffish with them and even violent, the book implies. And it's the. The. You know, Gamache and a couple others go to sort of, you know, they've done the autopsy report. They determined that this arrow is the one that is. That has killed Jane Neal. And they go and interrogate them, and Philippe tells them they think that Philippe did it. And they go to interrogate Philippe, and he says, actually, it was my dad who did it. And I brought him all this stuff, and I, you know, I showed him the bloody arrow and whatever, and he tried to help me destroy the evidence. And he, you know, I have this bruise on my arm that is normally caused by a bow and arrow, but it's actually caused by my dad beating me. And he, you know, it's. It's. It's. This version of the story is that the dad is super violent, that. That Matthew Croft actually killed Jane Neal, and that all the evidence pointing to Philippe is kind of a. It's. It's. It could go either way, but it doesn't actually point at Philippe, says Philippe. And then they go out and they say, hey, your son just confessed to the. This crime. And Matthew Croft is like, well, no, I. Everything he said is right. I did it. Arrest me. There's a whole thing where Gamache says, I don't think that Matthew Croft did it. I think that Philippe did it. And his boss, who is also his friend. It's not like a, you know, Gamache area loose cannon, but you get results sort of thing. It is a. Just say you're refusing a Direct order from me to arrest Matthew Croft because the evidence points to him. And you're hand in your. Your gun and your badge and your office.

[Craig]

Gun and a badge.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And Matthew Croft is arrested, but everybody feels kind of weird about it because the facts don't quite fit. Everybody does think that his crappy son probably did. But then it ends up.

[Craig]

Are you going to do the spoiler?

[Andrew]

I'm going to do. I'm going to do some spoilers.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

I feel like we've been. I feel like we've been going for a while to go for forever.

[Craig]

I just want to let people know. Just flagging, you know, remember that.

[Andrew]

Remember that painting that I talked about where I was like, it was a bad painting, and it's like a bunch of stick figures, but everybody looks at it and is like, whoa, she really captured something here.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure. We've all seen web comics that we like.

[Andrew]

It is. It is a week later, the arrow that killed actually the. So the arrow that killed Jane Neal is accounted for. It's actually the arrow that was in the furnace.

[Craig]

Oh.

[Andrew]

But the arrow that went with the other five, the arrow that belonged to the Croft family, is actually found in a tree at the scene of the crime. A week after the initial investigation. Because it's. Because it's fall. You know, it's Canadian Thanksgiving. As I discussed, the. The leaves have fallen. They've exposed this arrow. So it's, you know, it's revealed that the. The Crofts can't be responsible for having done this.

[Craig]

Interesting.

[Andrew]

Because the evidence doesn't match up anymore. And so they, you know, but they take this. They. They take this information about the arrow still existing to Matthew, and he is like, yeah, I was covering up for my son. And then they take it to the son, and he says, yeah, I didn't actually do it. Like, I was out there. I did shoot something. But I found Jane, Neil. I wasn't the one who killed her. And so it's. You know, it comes to light that they. They couldn't be guilty.

[Craig]

Okay. Okay.

[Andrew]

So you get the. So the. The whole time, Ben Hadley is kind of skulking around doing suspicious stuff. I suspected Ben Hadley from the start because he seemed like a real incel kind of guy.

[Craig]

Oh, no.

[Andrew]

You know, he's friends with Peter, but he sort of has the hots for Clara, Peter's wife. And he told. He's told everybody that his mother, the one who had died of cancer, like, sort of suddenly sort of not his. You know, his. His story about how Domineering and horrible his mother was. Doesn't seem to match up with kind of the available facts. But for some reason, we're not investigating Ben, like, super closely for most of the book. Because we can't really do it. Yeah, we can't really do it and make the book.

[Craig]

Gotta keep it over. Away, you know?

[Andrew]

So there's this whole. There's this whole thing with a will. This is another way where Yvette Nicole sucks. Is that Gamache? And everybody is like, he. You make sure that Jane Neal's will actually gives her house that nobody's allowed to see to her horrible niece who everybody hates. And Nicole does not look into this. But it. But she's like, yeah, this is totally the most current copy of the will. Everything goes to Yolande. Don't worry about it. But then it comes to light that Jane Neal's actual solicitor, actual lawyer, just had a baby, and she's out on maternity leave. And somebody finds this out. And the most recent copy of the will actually is discovered to give everything to Clara.

[Craig]

Oh.

[Andrew]

Who's the adoptive daughter of sorts.

[Craig]

Oh.

[Andrew]

To Jane, as I discussed. So suddenly, after a whole book of being sort of limited from going into this house and inspecting anything, they're suddenly allowed to go in and inspect everything. And it's covered in this horrible wallpaper, and everything's been painted. But then they discover, oh, this was all put up recently by Yolande, who's trying to move into this house that doesn't actually belong to her. And a bunch of Jane's art that she never showed anybody is under here. And they start, like, peeling back the wallpaper and the paint, and they become convinced that, like, some key to Jane's murder is going to be found in her art. So they're looking at the stuff on the wall on the floor as you paint it, and they're looking at this painting that is at this art show that has just opened up. And everybody is like, this is really crude, weird, bad cave painting, stick figures. But then also, they start saying, oh, I immediately, like, I can identify. I can identify everybody else in the village I can identify. Like, I can look at this painting and immediately understand what I am looking at.

[Craig]

Yeah, okay.

[Andrew]

But then, hey, it looks like somebody. Somebody's face is weird. There somebody in this painting. They look weird. It looks like their face has been replaced. It's not the same brushstrokes that Jane Neal would have used who got into this art studio and altered this painting to try and cover up something about themselves. Oh, and it turns out that Ben Hadley, who's had the stinky dog and has sucked and has been lying about his mom this whole time, He killed his mom with, like, extra morphine before she could write him out of the will. Oh. It turns out that Tim or Hadley knew that she had a fail son this whole time, and she was going to change her will to leave him a little bit to get by and to, like, live in the world, but not so much that he would be set up for life. And so he would, like, have to go out and start figuring stuff out for himself and stop blaming everybody else for his problems. And so he killed his mom before she could do that. And then Jane feared it out. And Jane painted his weird little stick figure in this painting in such a way that everybody would be able to look at it and also figure it out.

[Craig]

That's the power of art, baby.

[Andrew]

Yeah, that's art, baby. And Clara is also figuring this out. So Ben kidnaps Clara and throws her in the basement of his horrible old house.

[Craig]

Okay, so something like that does happen. All right, cool.

[Andrew]

Something like that does happen at the end. And then. And then Gamache, like, figures it out the last possible second. A lot of people get hurt. Nobody else gets killed, but they do solve the murder. And that's kind of the end of the book is just like, mostly denouement from there. And then, like, the. The nicest little bit of Deumas goes back to the Croft family, and everybody figures out. Oh, the reason why Philippe has been acting like such a jerk this whole time is because he's gay and he doesn't know how to deal with it, and he doesn't know how to tell anybody.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And so Olivier and Gabri say, okay, as. As punishment for doing the hate crime to us, he needs to come and work in the cafe to, like, make up what he did to us. And it's, like, partly going to be recompense, but it's also partly going to be like, he needs to come in here and see us and building. Know that it's okay.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

That he is. That he is gay.

[Craig]

That's cool.

[Andrew]

And, like, maybe he'll have role models and maybe this can, like, help him. You know, Gamache and everybody is. They're kind of looking at this. At this kid and seeing how troubled he is. And, you know, with the working theory that, you know, murdered starts, like, way before the actual murder happens.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Try trying to keep this kid from going down a bad path. Sure. And trying to get, you know, giving him giving him a route to. To. To. To be himself. To. To. Yeah. All right. In a way that I. I think, again, if you're reading this, like, if you're coming to this fresh as a. As a younger than millennial person in 2025 or whenever, probably you can't. I mean, hopefully you can't directly relate to this version of, like, the coming out experience anymore, because things have just, like, changed so much in the last.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

Two decades. Three decades. But, yeah, I think being closeted and feeling this. This badly about it was definitely. It was definitely a factor, you know, back in the early 2000s. So, I mean, that's what I got. My voice is kind of given out, so I gotta stop, but I enjoyed this. What other questions do you have?

[Craig]

Questions?

[Andrew]

Yeah, two.

[Craig]

Two questions. Really? Because you kind of said that you think you figured it out pretty early. Of course, because you watch so much Bones. You just know how this works.

[Andrew]

It's mostly from watching Bones. Yeah, watching Bones.

[Craig]

How did you enjoy the read, kind of after making that inference anyway? Like what? You know, like, what did you like about how it unfolded? Despite feeling pretty confident about your pick?

[Andrew]

I just, I. I think that once you get to the point where you're like, halfway or two thirds of the way through and somebody's been accused and you're like, well, obviously the book's not over this early, so it can't be this person. I do. I do think the. In a book that's, like, at all well crafted, like, technically, which this one is, I do think that, like, I gotta get past this and figure out how they actually. How they actually figure out who did it. Because the thing about identifying the person who you think did it early on is like, am I right about that or is there going to be another twist beyond that?

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

Proves me wrong in some way.

[Craig]

Well, it also sounds like too, like the false accusations or the incorrect guesses lead you to more interesting information, which is a good way for it to go. My last question is, does he stay in Three Pines? It. You know.

[Andrew]

At the end of this book, he is doing neither. He's kind of hanging out in the cafe at Three Pines and doing a bunch of denouement stuff with everybody. But he does it does. Sure. It sure does seem like he is feeling pretty at home here.

[Craig]

Is he looking at real estate listings?

[Andrew]

He's not looking at real estate listings, but I'm not surprised at all to find out that this does become the Three Pines series.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And, like, maybe, hopefully his wife moves here with him. And he's not just I'm gonna set up here and just like permanently solve.

[Craig]

I don't think that I would move there. I don't think I would move to my husband's murder town where they keep calling him for help with murders. I might put my foot down on that.

[Andrew]

Yeah, well, who knows?

[Craig]

I've got things to do in Montreal, you know.

[Andrew]

Oh yes.

[Craig]

That's my favorite French phrase. Oh yes. Oh yes.

[Andrew]

Okay. We have to be.

[Craig]

Well, thanks for telling me all about still life. Called still life because of the painting, right?

[Andrew]

Because it's the painting. Because she's dead. And also because it's some people life. Some people. Well, not even that. Just some people, they, they can't move on. They can't grow up. They can't move on to the next thing. They have still lives. Craig. It's got a triple meaning.

[Craig]

That should have been the sequel. Still lives. Now you see me. Anyway, thanks.

[Andrew]

Now you three me.

[Craig]

Thanks for telling me about this book. It sounds really neat. If I was gonna dive into a mystery series, this actually sounds like a pretty fun one to like crack open.

[Andrew]

I had fun. I enjoyed it.

[Craig]

Sounds different enough too while having like a distinction flavor. So if you at home are listening and you have any notes on our friends pronunciations or our English pronunciation, I guess you can send us an email. Overdupadmail.com if you are from Quebec I do need to know and I do need to know if you're still going to keep listening you can find us on social media. Verdupod Our theme song is composed by Nick Laurengis Andrew if folks want to know more about the show. Where do they go?

[Andrew]

Overdue Podcast.com is the Internet website which apparently I need to go into Squarespace and make sure that all of our domain registrar stuff is all up to date because it is not. It's not resolving for me right now but normally that's the place where you go to get the list of books that we have read and are going to read and all the links and stuff that Craig just talked about and the the archive of shows and all kinds of other stuff. Also patreon.com is our Internet Patreon website where you go to support the show directly financially you get access to our discord, access to our newsletter, access to bonus episodes, all kinds of other stuff, our ad free feed and many other things and it's a good time. Patreon.com overdue pod Craig, do you want to give them the December schedule? Have we done that yet?

[Craig]

We have not December 1st. You just listened to Still Life by Louise Penny, Chief Inspector Gamache, Mr. Lee Bougouan. Next week I will be reading Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. Then we're talking about the Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald. We're going to celebrate the holidays 1222 with kidnapped by the Krampus. I cannot Wait by Emily Shore to.

[Andrew]

Get Kidnapped by the Krampus. What is he going to do to us?

[Craig]

Oh my God. That's going to be our Happy Horny Days episode. So enjoy that when you're traveling or whatever you're doing for the holidays. And then on the last Monday of the month, we are going to give ourselves some gifts. We're gonna give each other American Girls. We're gonna be reading two American Girl books from the American Girl Doll series thing. Meet Samantha and meet Addie. But we'll probably talk a lot about the series in general. We'd love to hear from you in advance to help us ground that conversation. Please reach out. That's the show.

[Andrew]

All right, everybody, thank you so much for listening to our podcast. I apologize as ever for any pronunciation issues that may or may not have arisen during the recording of the show. But until we talk to you next time, please try to be happy. That was a headgum podcast.

[Craig]

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