True to her elevated style, Louise Penny turns The Beautiful Mystery into a revelation.

In the opening chapter, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the Sûreté du Québec are forced to leave behind their loved ones and the quaint village of Three Pines. In the twenty plus books in Penny’s Chief Inspector Gamache series, their isolation from the home community is unusual and quite significant to the plot.

After a long flight to the northern reaches of Québec, Gamache and Jean sequester themselves in the Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups monastery, committed to staying there until they’ve solved the murder. They have limited communication with the outside world.

Built deep in the forest three hundred years ago, the monastery was nearly forgotten and the monks could have gone unnoticed forever if not for their publicly released recording of Gregorian chants. The deep serenity of monophonic songs sung without musical accompaniment mesmerized Canadians, even before they knew who sang them.

“The chants were simple, but there was power in that very simplicity.” Penny writes of plainchant history. “They had such a profound effect on those who sang and heard them that the ancient chants became known as ‘the beautiful mystery.’

Imagine twenty-four men, all with exceptionally beautiful voices, committing their lives to the perfection of the Gregorian chant. With their gardens and farm animals and their chocolate-making enterprise, the monastery – translated to English as ‘St. Gilbert Among the Wolves’ – required hard work to be self-sufficient. But, beyond their skills and their willingness to work hard, all the monks were recruited for their voices. 

They were led by Brother Mathieu, a gifted musician and a devoted Gregorian chant expert. When financial needs arose that were beyond the means of the monastery’s humble enterprises, Mathieu recorded their chants and convinced the group to sell them commercially. 

Though the monastery’s name appeared nowhere on their recordings, the public tracked them down. Some of the monks see the public attention as an opportunity to raise even more money for the old monastery’s repairs. But those who cherished isolation and anonymity are desperately opposed to the publicity. 

When Jean Guy and Gamache arrive at the monastery, they find Brother Mathieu’s body lying dead in the private garden of the abbot, Dom Philippe.

With twenty-three suspects, the police inspectors delve into their lives and the lifestyles of these secluded monks, trying to find a motive for murder. Looking into the background of the order, they find that the group’s predecessors had a history of fleeing violence. They escaped from France to Canada during the Inquisition fearing that their love of music would make them targets. 

Before that, they had fled England in the aftermath of Thomas à Becket’s murder. Gamache remembers Becket’s contentious relationship with Henry II and wonders if the abbot might have inadvertently caused Mathieu’s death by uttering a sentiment similar to King Henry’s infamous line, “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest.”

In addition to fascinating historical background to her stories, Louise Penny never misses an opportunity to explore the emotional and psychological impact of violence and murder on her two favorite Canadian police inspectors, and on anyone who encounters it. Beyond those who are killed are the wounds of the survivors.

Jean-Guy and Gamache hope to exploit the emotional turmoil of the murder on the tightly knit group of monks. They did not anticipate their own unhealed wounds rising to the surface. Less than a year earlier, both men were shot during a raging gun battle in a Montreal warehouse. Though they’ve remained close friends, their sudden isolation at the monastery reveals the unresolved tension between them.

‘Ecce homo’ were the last words spoken by the murder victim. ‘He is human’ applies not just to the moral fissures among a group of saintly men, but to the fragile men trying to solve the murder.

Louise Penny is so much more than a clever mystery writer.

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Footnote: The Beautiful Mystery took me back nearly sixty years to my time in a cloistered seminary. Among the memories of my three-and-a-half years there, the serenity resonated more strongly than any other. We didn’t sing Gregorian chants but we did hold daily prayer services first thing in the morning, at noon and before we went to bed at night. After the evening prayers, we observed Magnum Silentium. Like the monks Louise Penny described, we were unified by our rituals, our beliefs and the beauty and quiet that surrounded us.