The Brutal Telling

THE BRUTAL TELLING

ALSO BY LOUISE PENNY

A Rule Against Murder

The Cruelest Month

A Fatal Grace

Still Life

L
OUISE
P
ENNY

MINOTAUR BOOKS
  
  
NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE BRUTAL TELLING
. Copyright © 2009 by Louise Penny. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

Grateful acknowledgment is given for permission to reprint the following:

“The Bells of Heaven” by Ralph Hodgson is used by kind permission of Bryn Mawr College.

Excerpts from “Cressida to Troilius: A Gift” and “Sekhmet, the Lion-Headed Goddess of War” from
Morning in the Burning House: New Poems
by Margaret Atwood. Copyright © 1995 by Margaret Atwood. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from “Gravity Zero” from
Bones
by Mike Freeman. Copyright © 2007 by Mike Freeman. Reproduced with kind permission of the author.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Penny, Louise.

The brutal telling / Louise Penny.—1st ed.

       p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-37703-8

   1. Gamache, Armand (Fictitious character)—Fiction.  2. Police—Québec (Province)—Fiction.  3. Villages—Québec (Province)—Fiction.  4. Murder—Investigation—Fiction.  5. Québec (Province)—Fiction.  I. Title.

PR9199.4.P464B78    2009

813'.6—dc22

2009028462

First published in Great Britain by Headline Publishing Group

First U.S. Edition: October 2009

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

For the SPCA Monteregie, and all the people
who would “ring the bells of Heaven.”

And, for Maggie,
who finally gave all her heart away.

Once again, this book is the result of a whole lot of help from a whole lot of people. I want and need to thank Michael, my husband, for reading and rereading the manuscript, and always telling me it was brilliant. Thank you to Lise Page, my assistant, for her tireless and cheery work and great ideas. To Sherise Hobbs and Hope Dellon for their patience and editorial notes.

I want to thank, as always, the very best literary agent in the world, Teresa Chris. She sent me a silver heart when my last book made the
New York Times
bestseller list (I also thought I’d just mention that!). Teresa is way more than an agent. She’s also a lovely, thoughtful person.

I’d also like to thank my good friends Susan McKenzie and Lili de Grandpré, for their help and support.

And finally I want to say a word about the poetry I use in this book, and the others. As much as I’d love not to say anything and hope you believe I wrote it, I actually need to thank the wonderful poets who’ve allowed me to use their works and words. I adore poetry, as you can tell. Indeed, it inspires me—with words and emotions. I tell aspiring writers to read poetry, which I think for them is often the literary equivalent of being told to eat Brussels sprouts. They’re none too enthusiastic. But what a shame if a writer doesn’t at least try to find poems that speak to him or her. Poets manage to get into a couplet what I struggle to achieve in an entire book.

I thought it was time I acknowledged that.

In this book I use, as always, works from Margaret Atwood’s slim volume
Morning in the Burned House.
Not a very cheerful title, but brilliant poems. I’ve also quoted from a lovely old work called
The Bells of
Heaven
by Ralph Hodgson. And a wonderful poem called “Gravity Zero” from an emerging Canadian poet named Mike Freeman, from his book
Bones.

I wanted you to know that. And I hope these poems speak to you, as they speak to me.

THE BRUTAL TELLING