Miss Wolcott's Ghost by Louise Penny
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, head of the Sûrete du Quebec homicide division, returns for his 21st investigation in bestselling author Louise Penny’s Miss Wolcott’s Ghost. Life is quiet in the idyllic village of Three Pines until the jarring ring of his cellphone awakens Gamache from a deep sleep in the middle of the night. A panicked voice whispers, “There’s a body in Lost Nation,” and hangs up, leaving Gamache in shock and inciting a challenging investigation, which leads him and his team into the past.
Initially, he wonders whether there has been a murder or whether the call was a prank. As homicide chief, he is duty-bound to investigate, but he faces no leads — only questions.
First, he and his trusted team, Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste, must locate this mythical place called “Lost Nation.” Second, the phone call is traced to Gamache’s close friend and neighbour, Clara Morrow, the renowned artist, who has her cellphone in her possession. And next, they must determine whether there is, in fact, a dead body in “Lost Nation.” For years, there has been a rumor about a lost colony that once thrived deep in the woods outside of Three Pines, but no one seems to know where it was. With the assistance and interference of the well-meaning Three Pines locals, Myrna, Gabri, Olivier and Ruth, they uncover the remains of the village of Lost Nation.
A Forgotten Village and a Mysterious Grave
Trekking into the woods, Gamache, Beauvoir and Lacoste discover a body lying in an unmarked grave in a long-abandoned cemetery. Dressed in a suit nearly eighty years old, the bizarre situation raises nothing but more questions. Who is the victim? How long has he been dead? What caused death? Who phoned in the death? Why is this body here in Lost Nation? Is there a significance to this particular grave?
Most disturbing of all, a vile plant, believed to be extinct, surrounds the body as if embracing it. A Victorian botanist named Daisy Wolcott identified the plant, and it has been appropriately named Miss Wolcott’s Ghost. But is this plant a friend or foe, and what led to its extinction and resurrection?
As Gamache and his team probe the death, a multi-layered ghost story unfolds for them. To solve the present-day murder, they must turn the clocks back to the Victorian Age. Do the mystery of a sunken ship and the fate of its passengers and crew and Daisy Wolcott hold the key to revealing the killer of the unidentified man and the secrets and lies buried with them? And how is Clara mixed up in this tragedy?
When the Secrets of the Past Haunt the Present
Miss Wolcott’s Ghost is a departure from Penny’s recent books, which have addressed such contemporary topics as nuclear proliferation, the threat to Québec’s water system, pollution, and political influencers. In Penny’s earlier works, Gamache and his wife, former historical librarian Reine-Marie, examined the jewels of Canadian history, such as the location of Champlain’s remains, in relation to his current cases.
Miss Wolcott’s Ghost is a welcome return to that tradition. This latest Three Pines novel is more of a traditional whodunit cloaked in a historical mystery than an examination of the current political state of the world. Penny, who extensively researches her novels, seems to have been profoundly affected by the discovery of the forgotten true-life historical events she has incorporated into this story. In her acknowledgment, she writes regarding the sunken ship, “It is time to remember this dreadful event, and those who went down in a passenger ship that foundered for only fourteen minutes.” And regarding “Lost Nation”, she pledges, “To not forget the dead and the lives lived in the Québec forest.”
Interestingly, these tragedies similarly affect her characters. The sinking ship conjures personal memories and nightmares for Gamache and Jean-Guy, especially after a former officer and disgraced protégé becomes involved in the crime.
Questions of death, courage, cowardice, avarice and how acts of the past influence the present are like the leaves that compose the mysterious plant at the heart of this story. And like the botanical wonder that is Miss Wolcott’s Ghost, this is a novel that will haunt the reader as well.
About Louise Penny:
Louise Penny is the multi-award winning author of the Chief Inspector Gamache novels, set in her home province of Québec, Canada. Her books, including State of Terror written with Hillary Rodham Clinton, have sold more than 18 million copies worldwide, topped international bestseller lists, including the New York Times, and been translated into 32 languages. The recipient of both the Order of Canada and l’Ordre national du Québec, her country’s highest civilian honours, her Three Pines Foundation reaches out to those in crisis and offers financial and emotional support, with a special focus on literacy as well as dementia care. Her husband, Michael, died of dementia in 2016. She lives with her Golden Retrievers Muggins and Charlie in a village south of Montréal.
