View source for A World of Curiosities (Chief Inspector Gamache) by Louise Penny

{{infobox1
|title=A World of Curiosities (Chief Inspector Gamache)
|sort=World of Curiosities (Chief Inspector Gamache)
|author=Louise Penny
|reviewer=Sue Magee
|genre=Crime
|summary=It might be the eighteenth book in the series, but this is as fresh as ever and a real cracker.  Highly recommended.
|rating=5
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=400
|publisher=Hodder & Stoughton
|date=November 2022
|isbn=978-1399702287
|website=https://www.louisepenny.com/
|cover=1399702289
|aznuk=1399702289
|aznus=1399702289
}}
After a harsh winter, the tiny Canadian village of Three Pines is enjoying the arrival of spring.  But something is worrying Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the Sûreté du Québec.  Gamache had offered help to a young woman after the murder of her mother: he'd been less certain about her charismatic brother.  For Jean-Guy, it had always been the other way around.  Now they're both in the village and neither can fathom what's happening.  Armand will soon find that they're not just in Three Pines but in his home and in his life.

Neither Gamache nor Beauvoir wanted to revisit that case - the one that brought them together and the discovery of a hidden room in one of the homes in the village ''almost'' comes as a relief.  A letter from a  long-dead stone mason was forwarded to one of the villagers and then everyone wondered why no one had spotted that the roof line of the building didn't match the interior.  Brick by brick the internal wall was removed and a world of curiosities emerged.  But everything was not as it seemed: there were puzzles and hidden messages.  An old enemy is going to be brought back into their lives.

Three Pines has always seemed to me to be the place that you'd want to live: a small, close community where even the outrageous are there to help.  Only the lost can find it - it's not on any map - and it's a place to heal.  There is, though, a contradiction.  This is the eighteenth book in the series - they all revolve around the village - and they all involve murder.  There's a permanent cast of characters - regular readers will be glad to meet them again and newcomers will soon get to know them, so it's usually the newcomers who are involved in the crimes.  Bad things happen, even here - but it's still ''very'' tempting!

''A World of Curiosities'' is darker than most of the books in the series, but not gratuitously so.  The bodies pile up and the tension is relentless.  I was desperate to find out who was behind it all - and shocked when I found out.  I missed all the clues.  I was going to say that this was a particularly satisfying read but I realised before I started the book that I'd never listened to one of the Armand Gamache books as as audio download - so I treated myself.

The narrator is Adam Sims and he's superb.  The voices were all exactly as I'd 'heard' them in my head as I read and it was rather like listening to a play with an added narrative.  I was never in any doubt as to who was speaking.  When someone is this good it's easy for the narrator to add a layer between the author and his audience but Sims avoided this superbly.  He's a narrator I'll return to.

[[Louise Penny's Chief Inspector Gamache Novels in Chronological Order]]

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