Gamache leads a tactical rescue team toward a hostage agent and realizes too late he has taken the wrong path.

Gamache arrives in Québec City to stay with his mentor Émile Comeau and recover from a recent traumatic ordeal.

The Literary and Historical Society board refuses to let Augustin Renaud address them and turns him away.

A telephone repairperson discovers a body in the library basement, which is identified as Augustin Renaud.

Elizabeth MacWhirter intercepts Gamache outside the library and begs him to help protect her community by taking the case.

Jean-Guy Beauvoir arrives secretly in Three Pines to reinvestigate the Hermit's murder on Gamache's orders.

The society board reveals the basement was about to be permanently sealed under new concrete, which would have hidden Renaud's body.

The Société Champlain members tell Gamache that Champlain's likely burial site is nowhere near the Literary and Historical Society.

Beauvoir visits Olivier in prison, who finally admits he fabricated the detail that the Hermit was Czech.

Gamache searches Renaud's cluttered home archive and discovers a diary containing cryptic initials and mysterious numbers.

Gamache deduces the killer hid the missing books inside the library itself and retrieves them from hiding.

Gamache presents his solution to the Champlain mystery at a tense meeting with the Société Champlain members.

Archeologists reassembled in the library basement uncover Champlain's coffin, which contains a woman's skeleton inside.

Beauvoir assembles the Three Pines suspects and draws a confession from Old Mundin, who admits to killing the Hermit.

Gamache finds Tom Hancock on the Plains of Abraham and extracts a full confession to Renaud's murder.

Bury Your Dead follows Chief Inspector Gamache as he tries to recover from a traumatic mission in Québec City, only to be drawn into investigating the murder of amateur archaeologist Augustin Renaud. Renaud's obsessive search for the burial site of Québec's founder, Samuel de Champlain, had made him enemies among the city's small Anglophone community. At the same time, Gamache secretly sends Jean-Guy Beauvoir to Three Pines to reinvestigate the conviction of Olivier Brulé for the Hermit's murder. Both investigations unfold in parallel, each building toward a dramatic confrontation with the real killer. The resolution of the Champlain mystery exposes a centuries-old secret about the founder's faith, while the Three Pines case reveals a devastating case of mistaken identity. Together, the two investigations force Gamache to confront his own grief and guilt and take the first steps toward healing.

The twin investigations that shatter two communities.

Reine-Marie bids Gamache farewell in Québec City and leaves behind their German shepherd, Henri, for company.

Gamache reads the latest of Gabri Dubeau's daily letters arguing that his partner Olivier is innocent of the Hermit's murder.

Beauvoir collapses from pain while riding a snowmobile to the Hermit's former cabin and is rescued by Vincent Gilbert.

Vincent Gilbert diagnoses Beauvoir's lingering pain as injury-related and warns him against overusing his OxyContin prescription.

Tom Hancock tells Gamache that a stranger could never have found the library basement, pointing suspicion toward board members.

Gamache visits the priest at Notre-Dame Basilica, who explains Champlain's enduring power as a symbol of the Québécois people.

Elizabeth MacWhirter describes the night separatist arsonists tried to burn the library as she and her friends saved books.

Gamache and Inspector Langlois work through the towering accumulation of papers and documents filling Renaud's home.

Beauvoir reluctantly enlists Clara Morrow as an informal investigative partner to help him understand the Three Pines community.

Beauvoir and Clara discuss the case and focus on Old Mundin's profound, long-standing grief over his father's death.

Gamache visits bookseller Alain Doucet, who confirms he recently sold Renaud books acquired from the library's controversial sale.

Gamache and Émile visit the Old Homestead restaurant and learn that Renaud had explored its basement shortly before his death.

A video of the rescue operation and factory firefight, spliced from officers' body cameras, is leaked to the internet.

Beauvoir secretly takes a Percocet before sitting with Ruth Zardo to watch the leaked video of the factory raid.

Gamache and Beauvoir return to Three Pines together and reunite Olivier Brulé with an overjoyed Gabri Dubeau.

While the central investigations unfold, a web of secondary events shapes how Gamache and Beauvoir make their most important discoveries and begin to recover emotionally. Gamache's wife leaves their dog Henri as support, and Gabri's daily letters about Olivier's innocence plant seeds of doubt that drive the entire Three Pines reinvestigation. Beauvoir's physical collapse in the forest and a warning from Vincent Gilbert about his painkillers foreshadow a growing struggle with dependency that will define future installments of the series. Key conversations with the priest at the basilica and a bookseller named Doucet gradually unlock the mystery of Champlain's burial site, while a visit to a historic restaurant confirms Renaud's final movements. As the leaked video of the factory raid forces both men to confront their shared trauma in public, the personal cost of their ordeal becomes impossible to deny.

The clues, confessions, and quiet moments that shaped both cases.

Beauvoir flashes back to the moment Paul Morin urgently called to tell Gamache he had been taken hostage.

Beauvoir confides in Ruth Zardo the story of Gamache's near-24-hour phone call with the captive Morin and his captors.

Beauvoir discovers that Olivier's sales of the Hermit's antiques at a Montreal shop inadvertently led the killer directly to him.

Gamache and Émile have an unexpectedly tense argument when Émile admits he hopes for an independent Québec.

Gamache decodes the mysterious numbers in Renaud's diary as catalog entries linking to books once owned by the priest Chiniquy.

Gamache returns to Sean Patrick's home and peels back a family photograph to find a date on the reverse matching Renaud's diary.

Agent Nichol decodes background noise from the hostage call and identifies a massive hydroelectric dam as the terrorists' true target.

Gamache discovers that Chiniquy's diary from the year of the critical dig and other key volumes are missing from Renaud's collection.

Renaud's ex-wife tells Gamache she removed several books from his archive on his behalf shortly before his death.

Gamache confronts Émile over lying about the Société Champlain meeting time and his prior knowledge of Renaud's activities.

Émile explains that Renaud tried to extort membership from the Société Champlain in exchange for concealing his discovery about Champlain.

Gamache learns that Ken Haslam deliberately silences his powerful carrying voice in conversation to avoid dominating those around him.

Beauvoir reveals to a stunned Old Mundin that the Hermit he killed in vengeance for his father was actually his own father.

Gamache persuades Tom Hancock not to jump from the cliff into the river, arguing his death would only compound tragedy.

Gamache apologizes aloud to Paul Morin on the village green and, for the first time, hears only silence.

The novel's most pivotal revelations come through a series of turning points that reframe both investigations and the personal trauma at the book's core. Flashbacks to the moment Morin was taken hostage and Beauvoir's confession to Ruth about the near-24-hour phone call finally give shape to Gamache's haunting grief. In Québec City, Gamache decodes cryptic diary entries, confirms a critical photographic clue from the distant past, and unmasks the extortion scheme that led to Renaud's death. Agent Nichol's identification of the hydroelectric dam as the terrorists' true target reframes everything that happened at the factory, while a confrontation with Émile over his lies about the Société Champlain forces Gamache to weigh loyalty against truth. The pool culminates in Beauvoir's devastating revelation to Old Mundin that he killed his own father, and Gamache's final act of forgiveness toward Paul Morin that brings him silence at last.