How the light gets in by Louise Penny

Is their a genre called Cozy thriller? If there isn't, there should be one to categorise this book. This book plays out like a thriller with a big plot created not only to destroy Inspector Gamache but also something more bigger and sinister. But it is also a cozy. A cozy little town with no internet, no mobile phones where the majority of the plot unfolds. A cozy little town with a bookstore which is more of a library, a crazy poet, a gay couple who run a hotel and a painter, where everybody knows everybody, and for once, a closed community where people are not at each others throats creating suffocation and need to escape the environs. This is a crime novel that draws parallel between killing Albatross and the secrets that we carry all through our lives that destroys us. A crime novel that is lyrical that makes references to poetry.

This is the ninth book featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of Quebec. I haven't read any Inspector Gamache books. I do go with latest is the best place to start a series. So I picked up the latest book in this series set in Three Pines in Canada. While a stranger to this cozy place, it didn't take long to get acquainted with everybody there. I like the way Louise Penny introduces us to this place with help of a character who got recently acquainted with the place and feels at home here.

Inspector Gamache is asked to find out about the disappearance of an elderly lady who promised to visit the Three Pines for Christmas but doesn't come as promised. We know that the elderly lady is a kind of celebrity. But what is her call to fame is revealed slowly.

In Inspector Gamche's office, he is clearly being alienated by his foes who have removed all hisconfidential  colleagues to different posts. His relationship with his aide and confidant Jean-Guy Beauvoir is at its worst. While Jean-Guy is getting deep into his addiction for prescription medicine, Gamache is not able to win back his confidence. Will Gamache win back the confidence and fight his place in his office? What are the sinister plans of his foes? What happened to the elderly lady? A cozy with a thrilling finale!

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