This book was the winner of the 2013 Macavity Award for Best Mystery and I can see why. This is the first Armand Gamache book that has nothing to do with the small Quebec town of Three Pines. Instead all the action happens in a fictional monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, (St. Gilbert between the wolves) which is based on a real Benedictine monastery that was built to escape from anti-clerical laws in France in 1912. The fictional monastery was built by some of the first immigrants to Canada, hidden in the woods, but now discovered because of their chants.
One of the monks has been murdered, the abbot called the police and Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir come to solve it. This is an order of monks sworn to silence, but who sing exquisite Gregorian chants and have gotten substantial funds from a recording the slain monk had made of their singing and put out into the world.. The chants are an important part of this story and it was fascinating to find out how music notation evolved. The book lulled me into a contemplative calm, as Gamache and Beauvoir get to know the monks and interview them for the investigation. It seems so unlikely that a monk would kill another, but something riled one of them to murderous heights. They discover a division among the monks - those who would like to make another recording, maybe even travel and perform, while others do not want to lose what they have in their quiet contemplation. For a while, I thought the book might become boring. Hah!
Flying in obnoxiously over the monastery, Gamache's highly disliked boss appears and stirs things up. Then a monk from the Vatican shows up, from the office that used to be the Inquisition. More disturbance. And the relationship between Gamache and Beauvoir gets tested. Old story lines from previous books rear their ugly heads and disturbed the peace of this intriguing and potentially low key mystery.
I do want to comment on the self sufficiency of the monks. They have their chores maintaining the buildings, taking care of the animals and vegetable garden. They use wild blueberries from the forest and coat them with chocolate for a product to barter with other monasteries and maybe sell. Not quite sure how they made it before they got the funds from the sale of the recording for putting in a geo-thermal unit and other improvements to the building. There is a small part of me that envies this kind of devotion and simple lifestyle.
Since the Mitford Murders was based on this real person and family, I though I would read something of what Nancy Mitford wrote. I only started reading"the Pursuit of Love" the first of three pieces in this omnibus. I found it very similar to the recent Jessica Fellowes book - a similar household with many children, where the girls are looking at who they are going to marry and lie about going to sleep over a girlfriend's house, but go to a dance instead. Fellowes does add in the mystery element, which made that book more engaging. I don't have a problem not finishing a book and don't regret picking this one up and glad that it was in our library.
I had read about this and when my audio book guy recommended it as being Daniel Silva like, I went with it and thoroughly enjoyed it.
We have Nate Nash, CIA agent who is handling one of the greatest sources the U.S. has ever had in Russia - Marble. He is young, intuitive and working hard to keep from having to work with his father and brothers in the law business. Things go wrong in Moscow and he is reassigned to Helsinki.
Dominika Egorova is a unique woman, who sees music and people's emotions as colors. She became a dancer, but an injury cuts short her dance career and when her father dies at the same time, her KGB/SVR uncle Vanya pulls her into the Russian spy service. She goes through the training including Sparrow school, where she is taught to seduce and is sent off to seduce Nate. Her reading of people by the colors they emanate is useful for reading their intentions, often full of lies in the spy business. And then she meets Nate....
This is a reminder that the two super powers are back in a cold war state, though we don't talk of it in that way anymore. Latvia was mentioned briefly as a place to fly through or that the Baltics were a sore point for Putin. the book ends in Estonia.
At the end of each chapter there is a recipe from the story - whether they ate at a restaurant, or one of the characters cooked. I had to go get the print copy from the shelves in our library, so I can look through the recipes, as some sounded really good. They don't have quantities, but they have method, and some things I have already made. The range is wide from Russian dishes, to American, Greek, Thai, Italian and many more.
I read this book when I was young, maybe high school, and really liked it. After I saw the movie, I wanted to reread the book, but it has taken me some time, so now I have to go see the movie again. I just remember Oprah being one of the trio of spirits or witches.
The book no longer seems so amazing, but realizing that it was written over 50 years ago, and all the fantasy books I have read since that built on the foundations that LĒngle established, yea it is pretty cool.
Meg lives with her scientist mother and younger brother Charles Wallace. Their astrophysicist father has been missing for a few years and they don't know if he will be coming back. Charles Wallace discovers Mrs. Whatsit in the woods behind their house. Calvin, an older boy from school is drawn to join them, and with the help of Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs. Which, they go off into other worlds to find and rescue their father. Calvin and Charles Wallace each have their strengths, but it is Meg that has to keep everyone together.
