Book Review | World of Curiosities by Louise Penny

★★★★☆

400 pages

Published: November 29, 2022
by Minotaur Books

Read: December 2022

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.

But to what end?

Gamache and Beauvoir’s memories of that tragic case, the one that first brought them together, come rushing back. Did their mother’s murder hurt them beyond repair? Have those terrible wounds, buried for decades, festered and are now about to erupt?

As Chief Inspector Gamache works to uncover answers, his alarm grows when a letter written by a long dead stone mason is discovered. In it the man describes his terror when bricking up an attic room somewhere in the village. Every word of the 160-year-old letter is filled with dread. When the room is found, the villagers decide to open it up.

As the bricks are removed, Gamache, Beauvoir and the villagers discover a world of curiosities. But the head of homicide soon realizes there’s more in that room than meets the eye. There are puzzles within puzzles, and hidden messages warning of mayhem and revenge.

In unsealing that room, an old enemy is released into their world. Into their lives. And into the very heart of Armand Gamache’s home.

Link to Goodreads

Main Characters

• Inspector Armand Gamache
• Reine-Marie – Gamache’s wife
• Nathalie – survivor of an engineering college shooting where the shooter wanted to kill women in engineering school for trying to make it in a man’s world
• Fiona Arsenault – child abuse victim, mom was found dead in the lake; recent graduate from engineering school, which she was able to complete from prison
• Sam Arsenault – Fiona’s brother, child abuse victim
• Harriet – Mirna’s niece, graduated from engineering school
• Jean-Guy Beauvoir
• Amelia Choquet – a member of the homicide team, she had a hard life – her dad was the one driving the car that killed Gamache’s parents – she made her debut in a previous book when she helped take down a corrupt organization within the force
• Myrna – bookshop owner, previous psychologist
• Billy Williams – Myrna’s significant other

My Review

The start of the book brings in quite a few tough topics. It was hard to read and slow to get into. Child abuse, especially child sexual abuse is a huge trigger warning for me. Penny didn’t go into too much detail, just enough to paint the horrible picture. She also brings up the topic of the mass shooting at the École Polytechnique, where 14 women engineering students died. In the book, Gamache was one of the first not the scene. Book #18 in the series goes back and forth between the first case that Gamache worked on with Beauvoir and the current timeline. It goes deep/dark into pure evil of some people.

I loved reading about how Beauvoir and Gamache became partners – Gamache was able to look past Beauvoir’s insubordination and bring out his better self. I also appreciated that they had differing opinions about the two children, Sam and Fiona, and their involvement in the murder of their mother. I think that Penny does such a good job with the deep character development and emotions. Three Pines is such a great, cozy sort of place – despite all the murders that are linked to it.

Spoilers