Louise Penny

Louise Penny's new novel is The Nature of the Beast, the 11th book in the Inspector Gamache series. From the author's Q & A with Tessa Berenson at Time magazine:

What first sparked your idea for this series?

It was just after 9/11 that I started writing it. At the time, the world seemed a very frightening and threatening place and I felt the need for security and for connection and company and a sense of belonging, and of course the peace and security that comes with that. And so I created this village. To be honest with you, every decision I made in Still Life [Penny’s first novel, published in 2006] was selfish. I created it just for me. So I created Three Pines, and I created these characters that I would choose as friends, mostly because also I realized, having been a journalist for many years and spoken to many people in publishing, the chances of people published were so tiny. I realized that really writing it had to be reward enough because it may be the only reward I would get. So I created characters whose company I would enjoy, I created a main character who I would marry, I created a village I would love to live in. And as it turns out, other people feel the same as I do, thank God.

Your books take place in the fictional village of Three Pines, but the portrait of the place so intimately drawn. Did you take anything from your own small town in Quebec to create it?

It’s definitely drawn from a whole bunch of things. Absolutely from the...[read on]

Visit Louise Penny's website.

The Page 69 Test: Still Life.

Coffee with a Canine: Louise Penny & Trudy.

--Marshal Zeringue