Bury Your Dead

Title: Bury Your Dead
Author: Louise Penny
Series: A Chief Inspector Gamache, book 6
Genre: Mystery
Published: 2010
Rating: 7.5/10

As anticipated, I picked up the next installment in Louise Penny's Gamache series. Bury Your Dead is written in a different format than the preceding books. Instead of one murder that the team investigates there are actually two mysteries in this book investigated separately by Gamache and his second in command, Jean-Guy. In addition to that, Gamache's last case is slowly revealed to the reader through conversations and flashbacks.

I liked the change in mystery style, it worked pretty well, though there were some details that didn't feel very believable (e.g. the amount of independence in Gamache's case solving). I also enjoyed the historical mystery in the book dealing with the location of the body of Samuel de Champlain who is a founding father of Quebec. The mix of historical facts (which actually seemed quite authentic) and the current-day investigation worked well together and I've learned a few interesting things. For example, turns out that all the modern portraits we have of Champlain are actually portraits of a different man and no one really knows what Champlain looked like in reality. There's definitely a lot of research work that went into the book.

The other investigation, lead by Jean-Guy also had some flaws to it. I thought it was a stretch for Jean-Guy to uncover quite so many new facts that Gamache didn't figure out in the previous investigation of the case. I was also surprised at how the case was resolved, and I wasn't greatly satisfied by that conclusion.

Despite all these things, the reading went by quickly and the book was both entertaining and fascinating, so definitely recommended to anyone who has enjoyed previous books in the series.