INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache returns in the eighteenth book in #1 New York Times bestseller Louise Penny’s beloved series.
It’s spring and Three Pines is reemerging after the harsh winter. But not the whole lot buried must come alive again. Not the whole lot lying dormant must reemerge.
But something has.
As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly more worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Sûreté du Québec investigators’ lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother used to be murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they’ve arrived in the village of Three Pines.
But to what end?
Gamache and Beauvoir’s memories of that tragic case, the one who first brought them together, come rushing back. Did their mother’s murder hurt them beyond repair? Have those terrible wounds, buried for decades, festered and are now about to erupt?
As Chief Inspector Gamache works to uncover answers, his alarm grows when a letter written by a long dead stone mason is came upon. In it the man describes his terror when bricking up an attic room somewhere in the village. Each and every word of the 160-year-old letter is stuffed with dread. When the room is found, the villagers make a decision to open it up.
As the bricks are got rid of, Gamache, Beauvoir and the villagers discover a world of curiosities. But the head of homicide soon realizes there’s more in that room than meets the eye. There are puzzles within puzzles, and hidden messages warning of mayhem and revenge.
In unsealing that room, an old enemy is released into their world. Into their lives. And into the very heart of Armand Gamache’s home.
