"Miss Jane Neal met her maker in the early morning mist of Thanksgiving Sunday. It was pretty much a surprise all around." Canadian author Louise Penny's mystery begins with the discovery of Miss Neal's body on a pathway in the woods. At first she was thought to have been victim of a hunting accident, but that easy solution fades as events preceding her death come to light. A few days prior, the retired school teacher had decided to enter her painting Fair Day in the local Arts Williamsburg show. This was quite untypical on her part, as she'd been painting and drawing all her life but refused to let anyone see her art; indeed, would not even let anyone beyond the mudroom and kitchen of her house. What was typical was her courage at an earlier event of that day, when Miss Neal stopped three young boys as they threw duck manure at Olivier's Bistro and hurled gay-bashing words at Olivier and Gabri, the proprietors. A trio from the Sûreté du Quebec are sent to the village of Three Pines to investigate: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, in his mid-50s, for whom violent death is still a sad surprise ("He always felt a pang when looking at the hands of the newly dead . . . the most poignant were the hands of young people who would never absently brush a lock of gray hair from their own eyes."); Jean Guy Beauvoir, Gamache's second in command, whose air of studied nonchalance was balanced by the tension of his stance ("[he] was loosely wrapped but tightly wound."); Yvette Nichol, on her first murder investigation, ambitious, manipulative and pathetically unaware of her limitations. They find not only a murder, but a charming community and emotional intricacies. The personalities at first seem stock, but Penny's descriptions go beyond the customary, and she has a gift for effective detail. Standard in this type of mystery is the tea-at-tragedy scene, but she takes the reader beyond the routine: "Rummaging through the cupboard like a wartime surgeon frantically searching for the right bandage, Peter swept aside Yogi Tea and Harmony Herbal Blend, though he hesitated for a second over chamomile. But no. Stay focused, he admonished himself. He knew it was there, that opiate of the Anglos. And his hand clutched the box just as the kettle whistled. Violent death demanded Earl Grey."
Equally in play is Penny's humor, both acerbic, as with the badinage between the cane-wielding and extremely crotchety Ruth and the suave Olivier, or naming the mercenary niece Yolande Malenfant, and gently sly--"The tail of Hurricane Kyla was forecast to hit later that night and the expectation added a frisson to the event, as though going to the opening meant taking your life in your hands and reflected both character and courage. Which wasn't, actually, all that far off the mark for most Arts Williamsburg shows." She also writes with tenderness. After Jane's friend Clara takes in her dog Lucy, Clara despairs that the golden retriever will ever recover from her loss, with this poignant rendering: "Every day for Lucy's entire dog life Jane had sliced a banana for breakfast and had miraculously dropped one of the perfect disks on to the floor where it sat for an instant before being gobbled up. Every morning Lucy's prayers were answered, confirming her belief that God was old and clumsy and smelt like roses and lived in the kitchen. But no more. Lucy knew her God was dead. And she now knew the miracle wasn't the banana, it was the hand that offered the banana."
Louise Penny has written an extremely satisfying mystery, one that will please on many levels, not just the puzzle angle. From lessons in archery to the tension between Francophones and Anglophones to a celebration of friendship with all the loving and sniping and compromises that real life involves, this book touches the heart while engaging the mind. Miss Jane Neal kept a well-read book on her nightstand, C.S. Lewis' Surprised by Joy. That title is a fitting phrase for Still Life.--Marilyn Dahl