This first book in the Three Pines series is an introduction to Inspector Gamache of the Surete du Quebec and his team of homicide investigators. It\\\'s also, and more fully, the readers entry into the village of Three Piines, so small its been left off the maps. It\\\'s murder that bring Gamache and crew to Three Pines, but that\\\'s not what makes the book interesting. It\\\'s the village itself, inviting the reader to stay, to learn its beauty and its secrets, that kept me reading. This is a first novel and has many of the problems of first novels. The characters are sketched, not painted with detail. The village is a fully realized landscape with the light in the woods captured, the village green waiting for us to settle on a bench, and the cafe fire ready to warm us. This is what brought me through this first novel and into the next. Not everyone in my group felt that compelled to continue. Three of the ten of us found the writing too incomplete, the \\\"telling\\\" rather than \\\"showing\\\" characters too indicative of poor writing. I can\\\'t actually argue against this, but I wasn\\\'t willing to leave the village, nor were the rest of the group. I am happy to say, having completed reading the series, that the writing improved with every novel, the characters becoming layered and complicated, and the mystery much, much bigger than any of us knew when reading this first book.

an unflappable chief inspector and small town of quirky characters.. vintage detecting... with all the twists and turns to keep you guessing.. fun for Sherlock and Poirot fans..

The Gamach mysteries are fun to figure out and the character development is an extra plus. The setting of a small town in Quebec provides an interesting setting that is just enough unfamiliar to make it interesting.

One of the "cozy mysteries"!! A little village you'd like to live in and enjoy early morning walk(ha). Loved the characters. My first of the series. I'll definitely read more.

The club definitely enjoyed the book and we had a lively discussion about it. We enjoyed the large number of characters with all of their quirks. Definitely recommend this book.

I really enjoyed it. Found it interesting all the way through. recommend to anyone who enjoys mysteries.

It is not great literature, but is meant to be an entertaining mystery. I enjoyed the humor and the poetry snippets that the author included. It also inspired me to check out the poems by Auden and the history of the Loyalists that left for Canada.Loved the poem "Jenny Kissed Me" that the author included.

Our group thoroughly enjoyed this mystery set in Canada near Montreal.

could be a 3.5 Recommended to me by friends. First in a series. I honestly don't know that i can read all the books that follow....i tend to get tired of the same character over and over. HOwerver I will read at least a few. While i found the constant playing of back stories a little tedious, I thought it was a good mystery novel and had me guessing until the end.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec and his team of investigators are called in to the scene of a suspicious death in a rural village south of Montréal and yet a world away. Jane Neal, a long-time resident of Three Pines, has been found dead in the woods. The locals are certain it's a tragic hunting accident and nothing more but Gamache smells something foul this holiday season…and is soon certain that Jane died at the hands of someone much more sinister than a careless bowhunter.

It is what it is, a fun mystery to follow. Easy to read and follow the story it is well written in the sense, classic literature it is not. If you are from the Montreal region it is fun to be in the townships in the fall.

Loved this book and all that follow it! One of my favorite mystery series ever.

While stopping to make dinner I was thinking I really need to get back to that show and find out what happens. I could so picture the setting on the book I forgot I was reading and not watching the story.