Showing results by author "Louise Penny" in Thriller & Suspense

Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in Three Pines. Though the tiny Québec village is impossible to find on any map, someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide at the Sûreté, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. Reine-Marie watches with increasing unease as her husband refuses to pick up, though he clearly knows who is on the other end. When he finally answers, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning.

The number one New York Times bestseller. A detective. As a fierce, unrelenting winter grips Quebec, shadows are closing in on Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Most of his best agents have left the Homicide Department and hostile forces are lining up against him. A disappearance. When Gamache receives a message about a mysterious case in Three Pines, he is compelled to investigate -- a woman who was once one of the most famous people in the world has vanished.

The air is unbearably tense as Armand Gamache returns to the Sûreté du Québec for his first day of work since his demotion from its command to head of homicide. Amid blistering personal social media attacks, Gamache sets out on his first assignment - to find a missing woman. But as he leads the search for Vivienne Godin, Three Pines itself is threatened when the river breaks its banks, and a province-wide emergency is declared.

When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is asked to provide crowd control at a statistics lecture given at the Université de l'Estrie in Quebec, he is dubious. Why ask the head of homicide to provide security for what sounds like a minor, even mundane lecture? But dangerous ideas about who deserves to live in order for society to thrive are rapidly gaining popularity, fuelled by the research of the eminent Professor Abigail Robinson. Yet for every person seduced by her theories, there is another who is horrified by them.

State of Terror follows a novice Secretary of State who has joined the administration of her rival, a president inaugurated after four years of American leadership that shrank from the world stage. A series of terrorist attacks throws the global order into disarray and the secretary is tasked with assembling a team to unravel the deadly conspiracy, a scheme carefully designed to take advantage of an American government dangerously out of touch and out of power in the places where it counts the most.

The discovery of a dead body in the woods on Thanksgiving Weekend brings Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his colleagues from the Surete du Quebec to a small village in the Eastern Townships. Gamache cannot understand why anyone would want to deliberately kill well-loved artist Jane Neal, especially any of the residents of Three Pines - a place so free from crime it doesn't even have its own police force.

On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather for a family dinner with Armand's godfather, the billionaire Stephen Horowitz. But the evening ends in horror when Stephen is knocked down and critically injured in what Armand is convinced is no accident, but a deliberate attempt on an elderly man's life. When a strange key is found in Stephen's possession it sends Armand on a desperate search for the truth that will take him from the top of the Tour Eiffel to the bowels of the Paris Archives.

In the green depths of spring, morning breaks on a woman splayed in a bed of flowers - her eyes wide, her neck broken. Her death is a mystery; so is the woman herself. But as Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team peer into the dark corners of the victim's past, they expose a secret that rots at the very heart of their community - a secret that will implicate someone they've trusted for years. And as Gamache knows too well, in the flickering shadows of death, the truth may be just a trick of the light.

Hardly a day goes by when nine-year-old Laurent Lepage doesn't cry wolf. His boundless sense of adventure and vivid imagination mean he has a tendency to concoct stories so extraordinary and so far-fetched that no one can possibly believe him. But when Laurent disappears, former Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is faced with the possibility that one of his tall tales might have been true. So begins a frantic search for the boy and the truth.

It's spring and Three Pines is reemerging after the harsh winter. But not everything buried should come alive again. Not everything lying dormant should reemerge. But something has. As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried. A young man and woman have reappeared in the Sûreté du Québec investigators' lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they've arrived in the village of Three Pines.

Former chief inspector Gamache has been hunting killers his entire career, and as the new commander of the Sûreté Academy, he is given the chance to combat the corruption and brutality that have been rife throughout the force. But when a former colleague and professor of the Sûreté Academy is found murdered, with a mysterious map of Three Pines in his possession, Gamache has an even tougher task ahead of him.

As Quebec City shivers in the grip of winter, its ancient stone walls cracking in the cold, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache plunges into the strangest case of his celebrated career. A man has been brutally murdered in one of the city’s oldest buildings - a library where the English citizens of Quebec safeguard their history. And the death opens a door into the past, exposing a mystery that has lain dormant for centuries... a mystery Gamache must solve if he’s to catch a present-day killer.

One cold November day, a mysterious figure appears on the village green in Three Pines, causing unease, alarm and confusion among everyone who sees it. Chief Superintendent Armand Gamache knows something is seriously wrong, but all he can do is watch and wait, hoping his worst fears are not realised. But when the figure disappears and a dead body is discovered, it falls to Gamache to investigate.

It's the height of summer, and the wealthy Finney family have gathered at the Manoir Bellechasse to pay tribute to their late father. But as the temperature rises, old secrets and bitter rivalries begin to surface. When the heat wave boils over into a mighty storm, a dead body is left in its wake. Chief Inspector Gamache, a guest at the Bellechasse, finds himself with a building full of suspects. With the hotel locked down, the murderer is trapped. But a cornered predator is always the most dangerous of all...

A MONASTERY. Hidden deep in the wilderness are the cloisters of two dozen monks - men of prayer and music, famous the world over for their glorious voices. A MURDER. But a brutal death throws the monastery doors open to the world. And through them walks the only man who can shine light upon the dark deeds within: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. A MYSTERY. Who among the brothers has become an angel of death?

Former Chief Inspector of Homicide, Armand Gamache, has found a peace he'd never imagined possible, away from the front line of the police and in the tranquil village of Three Pines. But when his friend Clara Morrow asks for help, he can't bring himself to refuse her, despite the old wounds it threatens to re-open. Clara's husband, Peter, is missing, having failed to come home on the first anniversary of their separation, as promised.

Felizmente retirado en el idílico pueblo de Three Pines, el inspector jefe Armand Gamache ha hallado un remanso de paz difícil de imaginar. Pero la monótona placidez de la lectura y la felicidad del sol matutino se truncan cuando Clara Morrow le cuenta que Peter, su marido, ha incumplido la promesa de volver a casa un año después de su separación y le pide ayuda para encontrarlo.

La Navidad está a la vuelta de la esquina, y en Quebec eso significa nevadas que encandilan, luces de colores y encuentros con amigos ante una chimenea encendida. Sin embargo, para Armand Gamache, el inspector jefe de la Sûreté du Québec, estas fechas normalmente festivas quedan ensombrecidas: algunos de sus mejores agentes del Departamento de Homicidios han sido trasladados a otras unidades, lleva meses sin hablar con su viejo amigo, el teniente Jean-Guy Beauvoir, y fuerzas hostiles están alineándose contra él.

En La naturaleza de la bestia, la undécima entrega de la popular y aclamada serie dedicada a Armand Gamache, el ex inspector jefe de homicidios de la Sûreté du Québec debe abandonar su tranquila vida de jubilado en Three Pines para investigar la desaparición de un niño. El caso destapa una serie de sucesos que conducen a un asesinato y que, a su vez, nos guían hasta un antiguo crimen: a lo mejor el monstruo que hace veinticinco años llegó a Three Pines y sembró la desgracia entre la población ha regresado.

Three Pines, ein eigentlich friedliches und idyllisch gelegenes Dörfchen in den Wäldern Kanadas, ist immer wieder Schauplatz mysteriöser Todesfälle, die Armand Gamache und seinem Team großes Ermittlungsgeschick und feinen Spürsinn abverlangen. Die Box beinhaltet die ersten drei Fälle für den Inspector, abwechslungsreich und spannend von Hans-Werner Meyer eingelesen.