A Trick of the Light

Louise Penny has been a globally popular fiction author since the first work in the Gamache series, Still Life, was published in 2007. It has since been adapted into an Amazon Prime miniseries, Three Pines.

Penny’s series is notable for its increasingly serialized storytelling. Though the mystery plots are distinct and end with a killer apprehended, the characters evolve significantly and their relationships build. This is particularly true for Gamache himself, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and some of the Three Pines residents. Gamache continually struggles against corruption within the Sûreté, and superiors who lack his ethics. This is put on brutal display during Bury Your Dead, when Gamache clashes with his superiors to prevent a terrorist attack, and he and Beauvoir are nearly killed. In A Trick of the Light, both men are clearly still struggling to find their place in the world after these events, and Beauvoir’s fixation with the leaked video of the shooting is a key signifier of his deterioration.

Penny uses this installment to advance other relationships within Three Pines. Clara and Peter’s tensions over her art, and his growing ego, were persistent features of their relationship in previous installments, reaching a crisis point after her long-awaited solo show.