“While every artist wakes up believing this is the day his genius will be discovered, every dealer wakes up believing this is the day he’ll discover genius.”
As I get deeper into this series, reading them in order, I can clearly see development in Penny’s writing. It’s getting better and better. The police detectives, the residents of Three Pines, and Gamache himself are pleasantly familiar, but never stagnant or stuck in their ways. There are delicious mysteries surrounding each of them and in every instalment Penny teases out more of their personal journeys in addition to the murder mystery at hand.
The dead body of a woman is discovered in a back garden in Three Pines after a party celebrating Clara Morrow’s first art exhibition. “There is strong shadow where there is much light.” Penny’s beautiful writing is layered with themes of light and dark, things hidden and revealed…or is it just a trick of the light? The images refer to artistic talent in a fickle art world, but also of course, to humanity. Penny has a sense of humour. An important piece of evidence at the crime scene is an AA sobriety chip/disc with both the serenity prayer and a figure of a camel engraved upon it. Why a camel? Well, perhaps if a camel can go for 24 hours without a drink, so can you? And I loved the classic Agatha Christie ending, also deliciously tongue-in-cheek–all of the suspects gathered in the same room during a thunder storm, with the lights threatening to flicker out at any moment, while Gamache reveals the murderer… 🙂
Some people call this a ‘cozy’ mystery series, with little graphic violence or offensiveness, with the exception of a potty mouth senior in the village called Ruth. This quote by Patrick Anderson in Washington Post review says it all, “If you’re looking for a well-written mystery that highlights an amusing village, takes a nasty look at the art world and doesn’t contain any cannibalism, beheadings or sexual perversion, you could do a lot worse than Penny’s ‘A Trick of the Light.'”
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