The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny

The power of the Bargain Book table is that it entices you to buy books you wouldn’t otherwise have considered. I’m not particularly a fan of crime novels and thrillers. I’ve always felt I get enough of that watching the news in real life without making it recreational. So I’m always a bit surprised with myself when I see a book in these genres that entices me to buy.

Apart from my antipathy towards crime novels, I nearly didn’t buy The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny because of its title. The word ‘brutal’ automatically made me think of the kind of excessive violence that really turns me off a book. However, there was something about the book, sitting on the bargain table at Munros that made me pick it up. I think it was the colours on the cover – rich deep browns and reds of autumn trees (or at least that’s what they look like to me) that made stop and consider it. Whoever wrote the blurb on the back cover also did their job well because in reading it, I was intrigued, so in the end, I decided to take a punt. I’m very glad I did, because I started it one afternoon and finished it the following afternoon – at just over 500 pages, you could say that I couldn’t put it down.

The author Louise Penny is Canadian. Quebecois to be precise and the story is set in the fictional village of Three Pines, supposedly near Montreal. Although I’ve never read her before she’s apparently won all sorts of awards for her books, and like most good crime writers, has a regular detective that readers can get to know and identify with. In this case, the detective is Chief Inspector Gamache and his team. Gamache is thoughtful, scholarly, and dignified. He’s an observer, a student of humanity and a puzzle solver, and Penny writes him in an engaging way that draws you in without ever making him feel like a stereotype.

Back to the story – a body has been found on the floor of the village bistro. Gamache and his team are called in, but no one in the village seems to know who the man is, where he comes from or why he might have been murdered. Three Pines is one of those small villages crime writers delight in, like St Mary Mead, and the claustrophobic nature of village life where everyone knows everyone else is fertile ground for speculation and a multitude of sub-plots.

What I really liked about this book is that it is about the mystery rather than the brutality. Yes, a man is dead, but while that is horrific, the reader doesn’t get their nose rubbed in it. There are no graphic autopsy scenes, or escalating copycat killings or any of the other modern crime tropes. Of course it is a whodunnit, but it’s also a whydunnit. In order to find out the answer to both, Gamache needs dig deep to find the identify of the murdered man.

As well as the acknowledged conventions of crime novels like the village environment, the story is inventive in its use of fantasy and horror tropes – there is an actual cabin in the woods, filled with treasures that just add to the questions piling up about the dead man’s identity. There are elements of myth, of cultural tales that lead to a sense of creeping unease, there are carvings telling stories that beguile and unsettle the village inhabitants and at the bottom of it all is fear of the unknown – not just the unknown who, the unknown why and the unknown effects that this death will have on the life and existence of the village, but the ‘Unknown’ writ-large – why do people feel uneasy when there’s no obvious reason to? Why do people look behind them when there is no one there? It’s this command of unease that to me makes the book much more than an average police procedural.

Like all crime novels, it’s a game between the reader and the author. I was thrilled that in a few places I went ‘hang on, I bet that’s important, or I bet X and Y are connected’, and I felt incredibly smug when I was right and almost as delighted when I was wrong because it meant the author was really good at her job. But what I really liked about this book is that the whodunnit game was pretty incidental. I was just immersed in the story. I was intrigued for and by the characters.

I think I would have enjoyed this book if I’d come across it in a British book shop, but there is no doubt that living in Canada and getting the cultural cues and context makes for a rich reading experience, but there is enough explanation without it becoming tedious exposition for non-Canadian readers to enjoy it just as much.

One final word as a reminder to myself as and when I do a reread - don’t read this book when I am are hungry. Unlike a US crime novel where the detective might grab a burger or a hot dog, Gamache, his team and the rest of the characters eat very, very well, and my stomach rumbled a few times reading those sections.

To sum up, I really enjoyed The Brutal Telling. I was wary going in but was pulled along by the deftness of the writing and characterisation, the unexpectedness of the various reveals, the charm of Gamache, and texture Louise Penny gives to Three Pines and to all of its inhabitants. I honestly think that I’d happily buy another one of her books if I saw it, and maybe even full price rather than on the bargain table and I can’t say fairer than that.

The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny was first published in 2009 and my copy was published by sphere.