Audiobook – Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny

Genre: Mystery
Series: #6 in the Inspector Armand Gamache series
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks
Publication Date: 2010
Read by: Ralph Cosham
Source: Library

The Short Version:
Three stories intertwine as events of the past are sorted through and laid to rest while Chief Inspector Gamache and his assistant Jean Guy Beauvior both conduct investigations and recover from their physical and emotional wounds.

Why I Read It:
This is one of my favorite series and listening to this one puts me in the unfortunate position of having to wait for the next one to be released. I’ll be stalking the library website to get on the list early for the audio edition.

The Book:
As this book opens it’s clear that both Chief Inspector Gamache and Jen Guy Beauvior are recovering from something horrible that has happened but is not fully explained yet. They are both on leave from work at the Surete du Quebec Homicide division. Gamache has come to Quebec City to stay with an old friend and mentor, while Jean Guy is home but restless and at the same time battling his own demons of memory and pain.

Gamache is doing some research related to a longtime interest in Canadian history. He’s spending time at the Literary and Historical Society in the English language area of the old city. When a noted archeologist is found murdered in the Society’s basement, Gamache becomes a somewhat unofficial consultant to the local police and involved int the investigation. The dead man was considered a bit of a nut who was obsessed with finding the body of Samuel de Chmplain who founded Quebec.

Gamnache is still haunted by the events that occurred in the previous book and begins to think he may have been too hasty in the decisions he made investigating that murder in Three Pines. He asks Beauvoir to go to the village and revisit the evidence and the case.

In between these two investigations are flashbacks of the events that put these two men on such fragile ground both physically and emotionally. As they proceed with their investigations they also work through what has happened in an effort to put themselves back together and lay the past to rest.


My Thoughts:
I say it every time but this is the best book in the series so far. The ending of the previous book had left me feeling a bit unsettled so I was pleased to see Gamache asking Jean Guy to look into that case again. I also liked the larger role for Jean Guy Beauviour in this one. He’s such an interesting character to me. I have a literary crush on Inspector Gamache, but I’m incredibly fascinated with Jean Guy and the way his character has developed over the series. To have him on his own in Three Pines brings out a whole different side of him. The scenes with he and Ruth the surly poet of the village are at the same time humorous and touching. The interaction between those two was definitely one of my favorite parts of the book.

I loved the way that the traumatic events of the recent past unfold so gradually in the memories of both Gamache and Beauvoir throughout the book. Near the end I was practically holding my breath as the story was finally told. The tension was thick and the feelings both men revealed as it was told were tremendously well done by the author.

Although I’m a real stickler for reading series books in order, I will admit that for most of this series you could read them out of order and be just fine. In this case however, I think you’d be missing a lot if you haven’t read at least the previous book The Brutal Telling.

I know that the next book in the series is due out at the end of next month, but I’ll wait for the audio edition to be listed at my library. Having listened to all of this series I cannot imagine reading them instead of having Ralph Cosham read them to me. He IS Chief Inspector Gamache to me and I wouldn’t consider any other format for this series.



Rating 4.5/5

SoundBytes is a weekly roundup of audio book reviews hosted by Jen at Devourer of Books.