A Trick of the Light is the seventh episode in the Armand Gamache/Three Pines series, set in the Eastern Townships region of rural Quebec, southeast of Montreal and just north of Vermont. Armand Gamache works for the Surete du Quebec, the provincial police force based in Montreal, and he often investigates crimes that occur in or around the remote village of Three Pines.

Three Pines has a character all its own. It's the kind of place that many of us would like to find for ourselves. It's separated from mainstream civilization and is surrounded by natural beauty. It seems like an inviting and idyllic paradise. Its residents know and care about one another. And yet, these are modern, knowledgeable and, okay, a bit eccentric people who still face regular challenges, as we all do. The trouble is that they now seem to have more murders per capita than the number you would expect to find in a small town. As a result, the people who live here are used to greeting Gamache and are often able to help him and his team with their investigations.

Long-time resident and artist Clara Morrow has finally landed a solo art show at the Musee d'Art Contemporain in Montreal. All of her friends and regional art connections celebrate her success at the exhibition preview in the city, followed by a private barbeque at the Morrow house back in Three Pines. But the next morning, artist and critic Lillian Dyson is found strangled to death in Clara's garden. (Avid fans may flash back to the beginning of The Brutal Telling, when an unidentified dead man was found on the floor of the bistro owned and run by Olivier Brule and Gabri Dubeau. These sudden discoveries have become an unfortunate trend in this town.) Although Clara and Lillian were close friends long ago, they had had a falling out, and they hadn't seen each other in many years. How did Lillian end up here, and dead to boot? And why had no one seen her at either gathering?

Naturally, Gamache and his team -- including detail-oriented agent Isabelle Lacoste and the ever-amusing second-in-command Jean Guy Beauvoir -- are researching the case. They find that Lillian Dyson was not exactly well-liked. (Although she was not as universally detested as victim CC de Poitiers in the second Gamache mystery, A Fatal Grace.) Someone within the art community must surely have had their reasons for getting rid of her. To leave Lillian in Clara's garden on the night of the exhibition debut must have been a symbolic gesture, too. We can be sure that these officials will figure out what happened and who was responsible.

The murder has indeed dropped a heavy veil over what should have been Clara's shining professional moment. But it's not the only damper on the overall atmosphere in the Morrow household. Clara and her husband Peter are having problems. We readers have long known that Peter has been ambivalent at best about Clara's talent. He's even sabotaged her artwork on occasion. Is he jealous? Is he just mean-spirited? What's been going on here? Whatever it is has suddenly bobbed to the surface. Readers will probably have their preferences for how this situation will play out.

As usual, Louise Penny begins with a closed community -- this time, not just consisting of Three Pines, but also of the realm of Montreal artists and gallery folks -- and then leads us to an ever-narrowing field of suspects within that group. And just when you think you can collar the killer without any doubt at all, you realize that Penny has pointed her writerly finger at someone else entirely, for another reason entirely. And she makes this happen in the last few pages of the book. Every time. Wow! This technique and her wonderful way of storytelling are what keep us reading, page after page, book after book.

As I've mentioned in my earlier reviews of these books: If you've reached this part of the series, then you should be reading the episodes in chronological order. You will be rewarded with knowing the full stories behind all of the shorthand references. You will know what once happened between Clara and gallery owner Denis Fortin. You will know what happened to Gamache and Beauvoir at the factory. You will be able to define what the acronym "FINE" stands for, according to Ruth Zardo. Penny has created a place of comradery, warmth and, above all, scrumptious food -- in spite of the fact that a dead body is usually hanging around, too. Three Pines has become a destination that we want to visit again and again. Thanks to our generous guide Louise, we can.