This month World Book Club talks to acclaimed Canadian writer Louise Penny about the very first in her astonishingly successful series of Inspector Gamache crime novels.

When a much-loved inhabitant of the village of Three Pines in the Eastern Townships of Quebec is found dead in the woods during Thanksgiving, the locals are certain that it was just a tragic hunting accident.

But Chief Inspector Armand Gamache from Montreal suspects foul play and won’t rest until he’s rootled out the darkness at the heart of this seemingly peaceable and bucolic community. His always courteous but also insistent sleuthing gradually brings to light the family secrets and long-held grudges seething under its apparently serene surface.

(Picture: Louise Penny. Photo credit: Jean-Francois Berube.)