Still Life cover art

Still Life

Chief Inspector Gamache, Book 1

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Still Life

By: Louise Penny
Narrated by: Adam Sims
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About this listen

The discovery of a dead body in the woods on Thanksgiving Weekend brings Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his colleagues from the Surete du Quebec to a small village in the Eastern Townships. Gamache cannot understand why anyone would want to deliberately kill well-loved artist Jane Neal, especially any of the residents of Three Pines - a place so free from crime it doesn't even have its own police force. But Gamache knows that evil is lurking somewhere behind the white picket fences and that, if he watches closely enough, Three Pines will start to give up its dark secrets....

Coming soon: Book 2 in the Chief Inspector Gamache series, Dead Cold. Winter in Three Pines, and the sleepy village is carpeted in snow. It's a time of peace and goodwill - until a scream pierces the biting air. A spectator at the annual Boxing Day curling match has been fatally electrocuted. Despite the large crowd, there are no witnesses and - apparently - no clues.

©2005 Louise Penny (P)2006 Isis Publishing Ltd Crime Fiction Mystery Police Procedural Suspense Thriller & Suspense Fiction Village Crime

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All stars
Most relevant  
The story held my interest throughout. The characters were well drawn and the plot had enough questions to keep me listening. The narration was excellent and I am looking forward to more stories featuring the Quebec detective.

Very Enjoyable

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Very direct writing. The metaphors and descriptions sometimes so simple but trying to be clever that it took me out of the story. An “easy read” that doesn’t challenge, but has a decent ending. On the fence about whether I’ll read her next.

Good, not great

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My first time reading the Gamache books. I loved the writing, the characters and the setting of Three Pines, and the narrator was fantastic. SLIGHT SPOILER: The 'reveal' so to speak, was a bit far fetched to me and didn't really make sense. I also didn't understand the point of Agent Nicole. But I'll probably continue with the series.

Delightful Escapism

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I was recommended Louise Penny by my wife and sister and now I am completely hooked. From only a few pages in, I found myself accusing just about everyone of murder. The town of Three Pines would be a wonderful place to live.... until I got murdered of course. Enjoy!

Wow! What a ride!

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Louise Penny has the sort of writing talent you can only dream about. I had not heard of her until a relative recommended her and glad I was to discover a whole string of books just waiting like a pack of your favourite doughnuts to be digested one by one! She is just the sort of detective writer I love the most, more concerned with character and setting than plot, but the plot is still there and the wrongdoer to be unmasked at the end. She describes a small town community in French-speaking Quebec with loving and masterly detail, until you know them intimately. And Inspector Gamache has all the qualities of a modern Hercule Poirot - far more reflective, observant and deductive than those obsessed with forensic detail. It is, after all, people who commit crimes, not blood stains or carpet hairs! If you want an excellent novel with a mystery thrown in, this is for you.

I had not heard Adam Sims before either and he does a great job of the reading, fluently passing from the French to the Canadian English and back again with hardly a pause for breath. Highly recommended.

Still life very much alive

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Any additional comments?

Perhaps the best way to indicate what I thought of this book is to say that immediately after I finished it, I ordered the next book in the series.In some ways it's old fashioned: set in an Elysian village, the contemporary Canadian equivalent of St Mary Mead, so beloved of Miss Marple fans. When we were children, perhaps we yearned for ponies, or to be prima ballerinas or cowboys or astronauts: as adults, we long to live in villages like Three Pines, where bistro owners leap from their beds at dawn to dart from their kitchens and proffer freshly-baked croissants and flasks of cafe au lait; where there are archery clubs, and where famous artists and poets live; where people recite Auden at the dinner table and no-one thinks it odd; where you have to google a word before you realize that someone was swearing. The mist clears every hundred years or so, and there is Three Pines.In other respects, it's most definitely of our era. In its analysis of what moves people to act as they do in particular, it reflects contemporary psychology. Why do teenagers sometimes act like cave trolls, brutalizing the people who treat them most kindly and with the most tolerance? Why do some people gracefully accept the most appalling affronts whilst others seem unable to forgive the smallest rebuff? Even the use of the word "girl" as opposed to "woman" was subjected at one point to a surprisingly subtle analysis, which I'm still a little unsure about. Not many crime thrillers have the ability to drop passages into your head and leave them there to hatch/fester.Most importantly, it's a good yarn. After you've been led up plausible dead ends a couple of times, you realize that the author is an expert in laying a false trail and you settle back to enjoy the story.As other reviewers have commented, the narrator switches accents for the main character with hilarious results. At some points he is as English as Lord Peter Wimsey: at others, though I'm not entirely sure how a French Canadian accent differs from a French accent, he can definitely no longer be pictured in tweeds striding across a grouse moor. Once I had got used to this odd phenomenon, it became truly funny, and I found myself laughing out loud every time it happened. At first though, I was baffled, wondering if a) there were two different policemen or b) the one police officer adopted different accents according to whom he was with. A lot of us do that, don't we?

Brigadoon with Dead Bodies

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Decent detective story but the narrator spoiled it for me. He made most characters sound bad tempered and switched character’s accent sometimes even mid paragraph. Disappointing

Spoiled by the narrator

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An unusual novel, fantastic narration. I loved the setting and characters. The story had a timeless feel.

quirky delight

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Very slow progression. Didn't capture me at all, but persevered to the end - unimpressed by the ending as well unfortunately. It's a shame because there were some absolutely genius bits of language in it.

not great

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I nearly didn’t listen to this because of reviews. I’m glad i did. It is an gentle mystery, a cosy listen but has humour and character. The narrator does not randomly swap accents. Gamache is Québécois but went to Cambridge uni where he acquired an English accent when speaking English. the narrator uses 2 accents to denote which language he is using as the other characters include anglo- and francophones.

narrator is fine

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