Book Review: The Nature of the Beast

The Nature
of the Beast

At one point in Louise Penny's The Nature of the Beast, one character aptly sums up Three Pines as follows - "Funny, isn't it? That little village has so many hiding places, and so much to hide. I wonder if it really is Paradise, or something else? What would hell look like? Fire and brimstone, or some beautiful place, in a glade or valley? Luring you in with the promise of peace and protection, before turning into a prison. The cheerful grandmother with the lock and key." It's true what he says, I must admit, for the cosy fictitious Québécois village has witnessed more than a fair share of murders that would put any country to shame.

One such murder of a nine-year-old boy Laurent opens the story, done away with in an attempt to silence him from telling the truth about what's hidden deep inside the forest. And I wish it had stayed that way, just so that it would have spared us the pain of reading through what seems an interminable list of excuses to indulge in an account of boring alternative history, as Armand Gamache, now retired, and his cohorts stumble upon a spy conspiracy so far-fetched and incredulous, it had me shaking my head even before it all ended. Like whatever!