Louise Penny’s Town Captures World’s Notice

Great article about one of my favorite writers, Louise Penny.  It was originally posted on Facebook by another writer, Anthony Bidulka, who writes mysteries I also greatly enjoy reading.

I’m increasingly impressed by the Canadian writers I’m reading…

In Penny’s books, that setting is usually the fictional village of Three Pines, a hamlet in Quebec’s Eastern Townships first settled by fleeing United Empire Loyalists and today peopled by charming eccentrics looking for kindness and croissants in an often cruel world.

It is also, like Agatha Christie’s bucolic St. Mary Mead, home to a surprising number of murders.

Just as surprising is how well Three Pines and Penny’s detective, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, have captured the imagination of readers around the world. Suddenly Penny, who believes readers are literary tourists and that, as the poet Emily Dickinson wrote, “There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away,” is making Canada the deadly destination to which they want to be transported

In the last few months, her 2009 book about the destructive power of greed, The Brutal Telling, won both the Anthony and Agatha awards for best crime novel; in fact, Penny is the first writer in history to win the Agatha three years running.

At the same time, the latest book in her series, Bury Your Dead, which is set mainly in Quebec City and digs up the long-unsolved mystery of Samuel de Champlain’s death, was named to several Best of 2010 lists, including those published by Amazon.com, Kirkus Review, Publisher’s Weekly, The Globe and Mail and The Chicago Tribune.

via Louise Penny’s town captures world’s notice.