Hadn’t a Clue

Many years ago, I created an online dating profile that eschewed potential mates who read mysteries. I was in my twenties, living alone in Toronto, and working a low-rung job in journalism while dreaming of more illustrious roles: foreign correspondent, Europe-based art critic, anything that might land me in New York City. The exact wording of my post is lost in the digital ether, but it went something like “Need not apply if your favourite book is The Da Vinci Code.”

This cringey declaration from my past floated into my present when my oldest friend recommended Louise Penny’s detective fiction and I said, point-blank, “I don’t read murder mysteries.” The statement was true, but this time I had to wonder: What was I afraid of? Not violence or blood, which I consume ravenously in television and podcast form. No, what scared me, as a writer, was the possibility of bland prose, formulaic plot, and troubled, unreliable narrators. The Escher-like sub-genres within sub-genres such as noir, espionage, medical, and cozy only heightened my sense of dread.

Like many fears, mine was unfounded, and to face it I chose exposure therapy. I started with Still Life, the first of Penny’s nineteen-and-counting New York Times best-selling novels, sometimes called the Three Pines or Gamache series. Her debut felt like the right place to begin. Since its publication in 2005, Penny has been named to the Order of Canada for her cultural contributions and has co-written a thriller with Hillary Rodham Clinton. Her work has spawned an entire tourism industry in Quebec’s Eastern Townships, where the books are set (and where the prolific author lives).

I didn’t have to wait long for the homicide: the dead body turned up on the first page. A seventy-six-year-old retired teacher, Jane, lies spread-eagled under a stand of changing maples, surrounded by law enforcement personnel. The murder weapon is missing, and suspects in the quaint bilingual town abound.

We encounter Jane through the eyes of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec, a kind, flawed, and careful man who has been called from Montreal to investigate. He’s surprised to see Jane, though he does not know her, nor is he familiar with her idyllic final resting place. “That was his little secret,” Penny writes. “At the height of a long and now apparently stalled career, violent death still surprised him.” In these opening paragraphs the narrator sets an unexpected tone: like the reader, Gamache is shocked. Because of this shared sensibility, I felt ready to follow him into the woods.

My theories on bad writing were quickly disproven. Penny’s prose is elegant and clear, the pacing even. True to the genre, there are many cliffhangers, as when there is a suggestion of something sinister in a local family’s cellar and the reader is left suspended at the top of the stairs for a few pages. Despite my initial misgivings, these narrative devices work as intended. I kept going, further propelled by the well drawn and sometimes bizarre characters and the thrill of pondering potential suspects. Was the killer the insolent teenager or Jane’s vulgar, bouffant-haired niece? Was the “always immaculate” artist Peter Morrow a creep? Would his wife, Clara —“the Carmen Miranda of baked goods”— ever stop getting food stuck in her hair? Why was the throaty-voiced poet Ruth Zardo so cranky? I won’t give anything away because there must be at least one other person who hasn’t read this book.

But I can tell you how my own life has turned out, at least so far. I became none of those things my younger self yearned for. Shortly after posting that profile, I moved to Newfoundland and Labrador, where I earned a doctorate in folklore, the plot twist of my career. I met my husband at a pub in St. John’s (not online, which will surprise no one reading this), and we have two children. I remain a devoted reader — one who, I can now say without reservation, enjoys mystery novels.

While I was getting my copy of Still Life, one bookseller suggested Michelle Berry’s recent literary thriller, Satellite Image, and a second raved about the 1970 classic Desperate Characters, by Paula Fox. Both titles, along with Armand Gamache’s second adventure, are on my to‑be‑read pile. The increasingly eclectic tower includes other surprising genres I’ve gathered along my reading journey, such as nature poetry, Latin American horror, and self-help titles about parenting teenagers. I like to think it represents who I am now and how far I’ve come.