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From Pg. 5
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, Émile remembered the quote as he remembered those days. Yes, he thought, that described it. Chasmed fears. Both their own, and the murderers. Across tables across the province he and Gamache had sat. Just like this.

Louise’s Thoughts:
The Hound of Heaven. I remember when my mother gave me the tiny booklet with the green cover and told me it was one of her favourite poems. I’d just finished reading The Hound of the Baskervilles, and for some reason thought it was the same story, in verse. It is not. The Hound of Heaven quickly became one of my favourite poems, to the extent that I memorized it. I suspect I loved it because it described my relationship to God, at that time. Believing, but afraid of what God might ask of me. It’s that same sort of tension that I try to bring to the books. Especially, perhaps, Bury Your Dead. The struggle to believe, to trust, to give up, in the face of terrible reasons not to. To face those chasmed fears. In my life. In Gamache’s. In yours.

From Pg. 14
Closing his eyes he breathed deeply, smelling the musky scents of the library. Of age, of stability, of calm and peace. Of old- fashioned polish, of wood, of words bound in worn leather.

Louise’s Thoughts:
So interesting to read this, and realize that the sense of smell has been a theme throughout the books. In fact, it plays a part in the one I’m just writing now. So evocative, no? How quickly not just memories, but feelings, come back. We’re transported body and soul, to another place. Like Armand, and probably like you, I cherish the smell of books. Opening one and smelling that distinctive scent. And then, put hundreds, thousands, together in an old library, and what do you have? A haven. Exactly what Armand needs.

From Pg. 28
Though these days he was never alone. He longed for it, for blessed solitude. Avec le temps, Émile had said. With time. And maybe he was right. His strength was coming back, why not his sanity?

Louise’s Thoughts:
I suspect anyone who has ever lost a loved one knows how Armand is feeling. Of being haunted. Of both wanting that ghostly companionship, but also longing to move forward. Out of crushing grief. The attachment here is with a barb. This memory, this boy, is connected to Armand, without respite. Both a companion and an accusation.

From Pg. 92
All the images he kept locked away during the day he let out at night. He had to. He’d tried to keep them in, behind the groaning door but they’d pounded and pressed, hammering away until he had no choice.

Louise’s Thoughts:
It was difficult to write about PTSD. To try to get into the mind of someone who’d suffered. Who’d survived when those he was responsible for did not. And that the conscious mind could only control so much, and so long. Before it broke. But then, as we know, it’s how the light gets in.

From Pg. 192
In my line of work you grow suspicious of coincidences. They happen, but not often. And when you see one you ask questions.

Louise’s Thoughts:
Honestly, I try not to deal in coincidences. Seems far to facile, too cliched. But when I do, it is done very carefully, very consciously. I hope, in this case, it works.

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From Pg. 1
“All around. Have you seen the light in the night sky?”
“I thought those were the Northern Lights.” The pink and green and white shifting, flowing against the stars. Like something alive, glowing, and growing. And approaching.
Olivier Brulé lowered his gaze, no longer able to look into the troubled, lunatic eyes across from him. He’d lived with this story for so long, and kept telling himself it wasn’t real. It was a myth, a story told and repeated and embellished over and over and over. Around fires just like theirs.
It was a story, nothing more. No harm in it.

Louise’s Thoughts:
The idea for this book, both the theme of story telling, of the ‘myth-time, and the title of the book, came completely unexpectedly when Michael and I were visiting Vancouver. We went into their splendid Art Gallery, where there was an exhibit on of one of my favourite artists, Emily Carr. She painted in a flowing, near abstract, style, uncannily capturing a sort of dream world in an area called Haida Gwai. As part of the exhibit, there was context, about the oral traditions of the First Nations. As well as a history of Carr herself. In it they described that she was very very close to her father, until a falling out. After that, she never saw him, spoke to him, spoke of him again. And only ever once referred to what had happened, describing it as ’the brutal telling.’ It came to me, standing there, that I wanted to write a book about myth, about the power of stories, and imagination. And perception. These lines are the beginning of a story woven throughout the book.

From Pg. 26
Most murder investigations appeared complex but were really quite simple. It was just a matter of asking “And then what happened?” over and over and over.

Louise’s Thoughts:
Ha – what they’re really saying is that a great investigator listens. Closely. I actually got this idea from my time as an interviewer on CBC Radio, where most of the time the best thing the interviewer can do is get out of the way, and help the person tell an often painful story. And listen, very, very closely.

From Pg. 23
He’d once heard a judge say the most humane way to execute a prisoner was to tell him he was free. Then kill him.
Gamache had struggled against that, argued against it, railed against it. Then finally, exhausted, had come to believe it.

Louise’s Thoughts:
This is something a high school teacher said, almost in passing, to my class. I can’t remember the context, but I do remember being appalled. And revisiting this idea over and over. Until, as I got older and became aware of my own mortality, I came to believe it might be true. This isn’t in any way a call to capital punishment, which I find repulsive. But simply an acknowledgement that maybe not knowing is the kindest way to go. I also liked showing this part of Gamache. That he is not at all dogmatic. He’s willing, and able, to face tough questions, and change his mind.

From Pg. 31
“Can’t imagine what Gamache thinks of us,” said Myrna. “Every time he shows up there’s a body.”
“Every Quebec village has a vocation,” said Clara. “Some make cheese, some wine, some pots. We produce bodies.”

Louise’s Thoughts:
Now, this is facing a slight problem head on. No use pretending that the body count in Three Pines (a village continuously described as idyllic) is in any way normal. Might as well embrace this abnormality, own it, even have some fun with it, then move on. I really hadn’t thought of this when I first started writing the books. As a result, I didn’t want to strain credibility too much, so many of the actual deaths now happen elsewhere. But the investigations are conducted from the village.

From Pg. 33
People lied all the time in murder investigations. If the first victim of war was the truth, some of the first victims of a murder investigation were people’s lies. The lies they told themselves, the lies they told each other. The little lies that allowed them to get out of bed on cold, dark mornings.

Louise’s Thoughts:
The Gamache books are absolutely crime novels, murder mysteries, but the biggest mystery in each is human behaviour. Human nature. And part of that nature is a certain willful disregard for the truth about ourselves. That’s what I love exploring. What motivates us. Thomas Hobbes said that hell is truth seen too late. That’s the vortex around which THE BRUTAL TELLING swirls.

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From Pg. 15
There was no television at the Bellechasse and even the radio was patchy, so Environment Canada forecasts weren’t available. Just Patenaude and his near mythical ability to foretell the weather. Each morning when they arrived for breakfast the forecast would be tacked outside the dining room door. For a nation addicted to the weather, he gave them their fix.

Louise’s Thoughts:
The Manoir Bellechasse is inspired by the Manoir Hovey, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. Though the Bellechasse is more rustic. I find it so interesting that when I wrote this, it didn’t occur to me to mention wifi. I wonder if that’s a reflection of how little it was used back then (waaay back ten years ago, which in dog and technology years is a lifetime or more), or whether it was a reflection of how little I used wifi. Hmmm, will have to look that up. But I suspect the internet wasn’t so widely available in rural areas. This also, of course, speaks to Canadians’ obsession with the weather, and for good reason. In Canada the weather can kill you.

From Pg. 18
Finally, when they could eat no more, the cheese cart arrived burdened with a selection of local cheeses made by the monks in the nearby Benedictine abbey of Saint- Benoit-du-Lac. The brothers led a contemplative life, raising animals, making cheese and singing Gregorian chants of such beauty that they had, ironically for men who’d deliberately retreated from the world, become world-famous.

Louise’s Thoughts:
Well, hello St-Benoit-du-lac. I’d forgotten that I’d mentioned the monastery here. It became, as you can probably tell by the quote, the inspiration for St-Gilbert-Entre-les Loups, in The Beautiful Mystery. When I wrote A Rule Against Murder, that book and those monks weren’t even a gleam in my eye.

From Pg. 23
Then he laughed at himself. Seeing things not there, hearing words unspoken. He’d come to the Manoir Bellechasse to turn that off, to relax and not look for the stain on the carpet, the knife in the bush, or the back. To stop noticing the malevolent inflections that rode into polite conversation on the backs of reasonable words. And the feelings flattened and folded and turned into something else, like emotional origami. Made to look pretty, but disguising something not at all attractive.

Louise’s Thoughts:
I think we’ve all known people like those Gamache is describing. The smile on the face and the sting in the tail. It’s a truism, and it certainly has been true in my life, that I find comfort in knowing I can turn hurt into something useful. I can unfold the origami and turn it into my own creation. Eventually. Once I get out of the fetal position.

From Pg. 76
“When I first went away to school and was unpacking all my little socks and shoes and slacks, I found a note pinned to my blazer in my father’s handwriting. It said, Never use the first stall in a public washroom.”

Louise’s Thoughts:
Haha – this is actually something my mother said to me. When I moved into my very first apartment on my own, a tiny studio, she came to help. Then, when it was time to leave we hugged at the door, tears in our eyes, and she looked at me and said, ’There’s something I want you to know.” “Yes, Mum.” “Never use the first stall in a public washroom.” Then she turned and left. I often wonder, but didn’t want to ask, how long she’d stored that one up, for that moment. Knowing we’d both need a smile. And to this day, if I can avoid it, I don’t. (Mom did later explain that people use them when they’re in a hurry….’nuff said.)

From Pg. 172
“The first generation makes the money, the second appreciates it, having witnessed the sacrifice, and the third squanders it. We’re the third generation. The four of us. Our father hated us, thought we’d steal his money, ruin the family. He was so afraid of spoiling us he never gave us anything, except stupid advice. Words. That was all.”

Louise’s Thoughts:
I remember hearing this during an interview I conducted on CBC. Can’t now remember who I was interviewing, but it had something to do with one of the “great” industrialist families in Montreal. It seemed so Greek, so tragic, so inevitable, so often true, that I remembered it, and more than ten years later, used it here. Those poor benighted Morrows. Blighted by their own blindness, to how very fortunate they actually were. Failing to do their sums, and adding up what really counted. To be honest, it took me about 35 years to figure that one out myself.

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From Pg. 8
There was certainly nothing cool about Three Pines, nothing funky or edgy or any of the other things that had mattered to Clara when she’d graduated from art college twenty-five years ago. Nothing here was designed. Instead, the village seemed to follow the lead of the three pines on the green and simply to have grown from the earth over time.

Louise’s Thoughts:
Ha – haven’t read this description of the village for many years, and honestly? It describes how I see, and feel about, Three Pines to this day. It is natural and organic. No more need to impress or prove itself than an otter or eagle or pine tree has.

From Pg. 59
It was Armand Gamache’s favorite view. The mountains rose graciously on the far side, folding into each other, their slopes covered with a fuzz of lime green buds. He could smell not just the pine now, but the very earth, and other aromas. The musky rich scent of dried autumn leaves, the wood smoke rising from the chimneys below, and something else. He lifted his head and inhaled again, softly this time. There, below the bolder aromas, sat a subtler scent. The first of the spring flowers.

Louise’s Thoughts:
Ahhh – it’s spring here now, as I read this, and while we aren’t quite at the first flowers, how well I know that awe, and wonderment. As the world comes alive. As a city woman, born and raised, moving to the Quebec countryside with Michael was a revelation. The beauty, the peace. The challenges. And how deeply connected to the rhythms and wonder of nature we became. I wanted, and still want, desperately to reflect that in the books.

From Pg. 55
‘One day that ego of yours’ll kill you. That’s all it is, you know. You pretend it’s selfless, you pretend to be the great teacher, the wise and patient Armand Gamache, but you and I both know it’s ego. Pride. Be careful, my friend. She’s dangerous. You’ve said so yourself.’

Louise’s Thoughts:
This is a continuing theme – Armand’s Achilles Heel. People sometimes tell me he’s too perfect, and I think – well, you’re not reading the books very closely. Not seeing the dangers of a good man, seeing good in others, where none exists. His sense that he has an insight – where others see only blindness.

From Pg. 56
It was a strange admission for Beauvoir. Normally so rational and driven by facts, he gave no credence to things unseen, like emotions. He was the perfect complement to his boss, who, in Beauvoir’s opinion, spent far too much time crawling into people’s heads and hearts. Inside there lived chaos, and Beauvoir wasn’t a big one for that.

Louise’s Thoughts:
Jean-Guy probably evolves the most of any of the characters, and this is the beginning of that evolution. Here we see inside him. How guarded, how afraid, he is, of being completely human. I knew I wanted him to grow, but to be honest, at this stage, I didn’t know in which direction. Or how he’d get there. What would have to happen, to break Beauvoir’s mind-set? Of course, later in the series, we see. It had to be an event so shattering, he could not remain the same.

From Pg. 65
Clara turned to Gamache….He spoke to her in English, as a courtesy, she knew. His English was perfect and, strangely, he had a British accent. She’d been meaning each time they’d met to ask him about that.
‘Why do you speak with an English accent?’
His eyebrows rose and he turned a mildly surprised face to her.
‘Is that the answer to my question?’ he asked with a smile.
‘No, professor. But it’s something I’ve been meaning to ask and keep forgetting.’
‘I went to Cambridge. Christ’s College. Studied history.’
‘And honed your English.’
‘Learned my English.’

Louise’s Thoughts:
Now this is a nod to two people. First and foremost, my husband Michael, on whom Gamache is modelled. Michael, not completely coincidently, went to Christ’s College, Cambridge, and loved it. But this part of Gamache’s character also acknowledges someone I interviewed often when I was a journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Jacques Parizeau was the leader of the separatist Parti Québécois. He fought most of his political life to have Québec separate from the rest of Canada. He was a passionate defender of the French language, and most Anglos were wary of him at best, hated him at worst. And yet, he was an Anglophile, and spoke perfect English with a British accent. His love of all things English didn’t diminish his aspirations for his beloved Québec. I found that fascinating. And while Gamache is not a separatist, I thought it would be fun to add this unexpected element to his character – his slightly accented English. And the fact he too loves Québec and went to Cambridge.