A Trick of the Light (Chief Inspector Gamache #7), Louise Penny. New York: Minotaur, 2012.

Summary: The vernissage for Clara’s art show is a stunning success with glowing reviews only to be spoiled when the body of her estranged childhood friend is found in her flowerbed.

This was Clara Morrow’s night, the vernissage (a private preview of an art show) for her solo show at the Musee d’Art. A night for her friends, for art critics, and art dealers. The reactions suggest a stunning success. Gamache is there studying a painting of Ruth as an aged Virgin Mary, bitter with a hint of light in her eye. What does it mean? He discusses it with Quebec’s most distinguished art dealer, utterly taken by the picture. Later that night, an equally celebratory party takes place at the Morrows, attended even by Fortin, the art dealer who snubbed her after she challenged his homophobic slurs.

She wakens to savor the triumph on her terrace the next morning when some approaching friends suddenly stop. There is something in her Clara’s flower bed. Or rather someone in a bright red dress. Someone Clara knows. Lying dead with a broken neck. The childhood friend who took her under her wing, and later manipulatively controlled her. Both were art students. When Clara asserted her art instincts against her friend’s advice, the relationship was breached, later irreparably broken with a vicious review from her former friend, Lillian Dyson.

Vicious, career-ending reviews became Lillian’s specialty. Then she disappeared for many years in New York. Years of descent into alcoholism until a recent return to Quebec. One of the critical questions revolving around her is, can a person truly change for the better?

The list of suspects connected with her only begins with Clara. Other artists whose careers were shattered. A chief justice and an AA sponsor. Art dealers. Nearly everyone at the party at Clara’s. Gamache’s team of Beauvoir and LaCoste must unravel not only who killed Lillian but how she even found Three Pines and Clara’s party.

Like other mysteries in this series, there are multiple layers to the plot connected to the murder of the hermit in book five and the ambush of Gamache’s team and the near deaths of Beauvoir and Gamache in book six. The video of the ambush that had been leaked continues to cause trouble. Gamache wonders who really leaked it, not accepting that a hacker did it. Beauvoir seems in deeper trouble, divorced, using painkillers, sleeping poorly, watching the video repeatedly, and wrestling with demons and tempted to an affair that could destroy his relationship with Gamache. Gamache knows Beauvoir is in trouble. He doesn’t realize that it is his trouble, too.

The story explores the secrets characters keep, the ways they can fester, and how lies conceal when liberation beckons in telling the truth. Secrets that threaten Peter and Clara. Secrets that threaten Beauvoir and Gamache. Then there are those clear-eyed enough to see through the lies–Myrna the bookseller and Ruth, who never fails to amaze.

Penny also explores the question of forgiveness. When is it right to seek forgiveness? Can we truly forgive? Will we forgive? Several characters, including those wounded by Lillian’s reviews face these questions.

Then there is that dot of light in the painting of Ruth. Is it the light of hope or a mere trick of the light? What is it in hard-bitten old Ruth that she sits on a bench feeding the birds and gazing up at the sky looking for Rosa the duck to return?

Louise Penny seems to grow in each book in her ability to weave these profound elements into a complicated, multi-layered plot with evolving characters, centered around Gamache, so insightful yet also vulnerable to what he does not see, so able to command love and loyalty, as well as deep jealousies and resentments. Already has me looking forward to book eight and those to follow!