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. Clara’s earlier showdown with Denis Fortin during The Brutal Telling, during which she refused his patronage knowing it might cost her career, return to prominence here as Fortin’s anger at her leads to his choice to murder Lillian Dyson in her garden. Ruth’s love for Rosa the duck, and her eventual return, also reach a conclusion here—Rosa reappears in How the Light Gets In as part of Beauvoir’s continuing experiences with substance use disorder and return to Three Pines.

A Trick of the Light closely echoes the first entry in the series, Still Life, in which a local art show with a painting by Jane Neal proved pivotal to solving Jane’s murder. Jane leaves Clara her home and fortune, which helps the Morrows attain financial stability and gives Clara the space to create. The portrait of Ruth as the Virgin Mary is called Still Life, reflecting an observation of Myrna’s that dynamism and agency, rather than remaining “still” in one place, is key to emotional health. Myrna unknowingly describes Jane’s killer, Ben Hadley, with this description of a “still” life. Clara’s choice of portrait title is likely a tribute to Jane, who was an artist herself and close to Ruth.

Ben’s family home features in other cases, such as The Cruelest Month. leading to its renovation into the inn and spa of later novels. In that installment, Peter loses his best friend and is stunned by not recognizing Ben as a killer—his failure to understand Clara’s art, like his failure to see Ben’s true nature, are long-running issues with his character. Clara’s choice to ask him to leave underlines that she has internalized the lessons of Jane’s death more than he has, while leaving Peter’s own evolution an open question.

Though Lillian’s killer is found, Beauvoir’s own journey toward recovery remains incomplete, as does the mystery of who leaked the video. The ultimate outcome of Gamache’s struggle with corruption is left unresolved. The serialized storytelling on display here mirrors the emphasis throughout A Trick of the Light that recovery, and growth, are long-term processes.