The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny (2012)

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.