Probably my favorite entry in the Gamache oeuvre so far! Coming out of "The Brutal Telling" I was a little unsure where we'd be going... it wasn't my favorite, and since I knew "Bury Your Dead" would pick up the thread of that case I was a little wary of #6. But I thought this was such a strong follow up, and my (pleasant) surprise netted this one 5 stars! BABY WE'RE BACK.

As with "A Rule Against Murder," I think the series is well served when it travels away from Three Pines sometimes just to prevent the setting and the characters from getting too stale. I do miss the familiar characters of the village when we stray, though, and "Bury Your Dead" solved this ~where are we happiest~ dilemma by bringing us the best of both worlds—Inspector Beauvoir kept us in Three Pines

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with his reinvestigation of Olivier's arrest/conviction for the murder of the hermit in the previous book

, but we didn't linger there. As a side plot with very high stakes for our central characters, I thought this narrative served as a great b story for Inspector Gamache's spontaneous a-story investigation. Add in the flashback narrative of the case-gone-wrong that left some of Gamache's cherished agents dead, and we had a lot to focus on!

But rather than getting too busy, I think these shifting storylines kept constant interest in the book while also diversifying the plotlines of the series. I also think that having so many stories in the book prevented any one storyline from being too complicated, which was beneficial for the reader trying to keep everything straight; especially since I suspect that we'll be returning to the attack that shook Gamache at some point in the future, since Penny does tend to resurrect and reanimate plots from the past.

This is also really the first time that Louise Penny showed us a flawed and pretty broken Gamache,

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both in his perceived error that ended with Agent Morin's death and well as his mistaken certainty that Olivier was a murderer,

and I think that portrait helped to humanize him as our hero. He is excellent at his job and a stellar protagonist, but it's good for him to be fallible too as it makes him more believable and endearing. With every book, the characterization of Gamache just keeps getting better.

And speaking on Gamache in this book, I thought his non-Three-Pines mystery was actually super interesting—who killed a researcher looking for the remains of Quebec's founder, and where ARE the remains? The history was intriguing but still accessible enough for this non-Canadian, and I was as gripped by this storyline as the village investigation with characters we already knew.

In "Bury Your Dead" Louise Penny found a perfect recipe for success and intrigue; I know it probably can't be replicated in coming books, but I'm feeling good about the trajectory of the series! Onto the next—let's see how long it takes until I need a break again but for now I'm going strong!!