Cerebral, wise and compassionate, Gamache is destined for stardom. Don’t miss this stellar debut.
Three Pines, an appealing Quebecois community, is shaken by the death of a beloved longtime village schoolteacher and unsung artist.
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team find that Miss Jane Neal has been shot through the heart with an arrow. Is it a hunting accident or murder? Gamache sets up shop in the charming village B&B owned by a gay couple but is suspended when he refuses to arrest a local bowman who confesses after his sullen son is fingered for the crime. His longtime associate Beauvoir takes over while Gamache ponders the case. Jane, who never exhibited her work, had just had an astonishing folk art painting accepted for a show. Her obnoxious niece Yolande, who can’t wait to get into Jane’s house, gets a court order to keep the police out. Meanwhile, an equally arrogant trainee has not done her job checking wills, and a new one turns up leaving almost everything to Jane’s neighbor Clara Morrow, a married artist who’d been like a daughter to Jane, whose youthful romance had been quashed by her parents. Because no one had ever been allowed past Jane’s kitchen, everyone’s dumbfounded to find walls, recently covered by Yolande in appalling wallpaper, full of murals. The slight difference Clara notices between the murals and Jane’s painting holds the clue to her murder.
Cerebral, wise and compassionate, Gamache is destined for stardom. Don’t miss this stellar debut.Pub Date: July 17, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-35255-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/Minotaur
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2006
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
This Mann-esque German import, previously unpublished in English, takes readers on a lonely midnight walk without a map through crumbling foreign alleyways. Koeppen (Pigeons on the Grass, not reviewed) gives his postWW II narrative, a cross between domestic drama and fairy tale, four leading characters: Siegfried Pfaffrath, a composer; his father, Friedrich, the corrupt OberbÅrgermeister of their hometown; Friedrich's brother-in-law Gottlieb Judejahn, a former SS soldier; and Gottlieb's son Adolf, a priest. Estranged during the war, the four become reacquainted in Rome. Hofmann, who won a Times Literary Supplement prize in England for this translation, explains in his introduction that the characters are allegories as well as people (they represent music, bureaucracy, murder, and religion—four areas in which Germans have excelled), and that the text is a symbol as well as a story. Woe, then, to the lay reader without a background in German culture. A sense of alienation hangs over the text: The characters never seem able to penetrate one another's lives, and the prose is equally detached. The big family reunion is a case in point. Koeppen's staccato narrative brings the four protagonists together at Siegfried's concert, where they engage in about as much intimate contact as would pieces on a chessboard. The action occurs primarily in the characters' minds and memories. There are some vivid and disturbing depictions, especially that of Gottlieb, whose relationship to his family, women, and the heinous Third Reich is closely examined. Still obsessed with Jews, he forms a twisted attraction to a local barmaid who he suspects is Jewish. His plans to bed and destroy her are temporarily interrupted by Adolf's appearance and the discovery that she is Catholic, but his anger is rerouted to another outlet. Desolate, cold, cryptic.
Pub Date: Sept. 13, 1994
ISBN: 0-14-018790-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1994
A treasure trove of Victoriana, especially for foodies. More history than mystery but a truly delightful read.
A split-second decision is life-changing in this stand-alone Victorian-era mystery from Bowen (Love and Death Among the Cheetahs, 2019, etc.).
Isabella Waverly’s father is an aristocrat estranged from his family who’s fallen so far in the world that he sent his oldest daughter out to work as a servant at 15. Her only joy is learning to cook. When a girl is run over by an omnibus before her eyes, Bella automatically picks up an envelope the dead girl had been clutching. The envelope contains an invitation to apply for an under-cook position at Buckingham Palace that very day. Introducing herself as Helen Barton, Bella snags the job. She hides her new position from Louisa, the younger sister who’s marrying the son of a well-off family. She struggles to immerse herself in the persona of a girl from Yorkshire, explaining her upper-class accent by saying her father was a gentleman. The only fly in the ointment is the appearance of Helen’s brother, who blackmails her into finding a job for him, too. Bella’s passion for cooking and her work ethic soon endear her to the mostly male staff. Queen Victoria, who has an enormous appetite for rich foods, so enjoys Bella’s scones that she personally asks her to make them every day. When her majesty travels to Nice, Bella goes along and gets to put her knowledge of French to use. She develops a semiromantic friendship with the head chef at the hotel, which was built especially for the queen. Indeed, her life seems idyllic until Count Wilhelm, the betrothed of Princess Sophie, dies, ostensibly from a poisoned mushroom Bella bought in a local market. Now she must juggle cooking and a suddenly active love life as she searches for a way to end her predicament.
A treasure trove of Victoriana, especially for foodies. More history than mystery but a truly delightful read.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5420-0825-9
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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