Bury Your Dead

The first Gamache novel, Still Life, was published in 2005, and the most recent in 2022. All of Penny’s mysteries showcase her awareness of the genre: A detective and his assistants work to solve a central mystery, with clues to the killer’s identity interspersed throughout. Penny, however, draws more on the recent psychological trends in the genre rather than those of the traditional country house mystery or English detective novel, perhaps most closely associated with the work of Agatha Christie. Penny is interested in the emotional lives of her investigators and her secondary characters. Penny has written publicly about her admiration for the novels of P. D. James, whose long-running Adam Dalgliesh series, first published in the 1960s, epitomize this trend.

While the first few installments in the Gamache series take place in or near the village of Three Pines, Bury Your Dead marks a departure by taking place in Québec City. Penny draws directly on previous installments in this novel, marking an increasing trend of serial storytelling. Beauvoir asks about Clara Morrow’s art show, a subplot during the Hermit case and the main plot point in the following installment, A Trick of the Light. The serialization is most apparent, however, in the immediate return to the death of the Hermit from The Brutal Telling and the emotional impact of Olivier Brulé’s arrest. Subsequent installments will focus even more closely on the relationship between Gamache and Beauvoir and the latter’s psychological struggles, foreshadowed here by his use of OxyContin to cope with his emotional pain. This arc, and the ongoing machinations of Sylvain Francoeur, reaches its conclusion in the 10th installment in the series, How the Light Gets In.

The series is ongoing, with a continued focus on police corruption, Three Pines, and contemporary politics. The most recent installment is 2022’s A World of Curiosities.