Still Life
Louise Penny, 2005
Mystery, thriller & crime Contemporary fiction
A body in the woods of a village so small it has no police force, and a detective who thinks wisdom starts with admitting you're wrong.
Feels like curiosity and serenity. About morality.
A page from the book
Four short sentences, and not one of them comes easily.
There are four things that lead to wisdom. You ready for them?’She nodded, wondering when the police work would begin."They are four sentences we learn to say, and mean." Gamache held up his hand as a fist and raised a finger with each point. "I don’t know. I need help. I’m sorry. I was wrong’. Louise Penny.Penny spent nearly twenty years as a CBC radio journalist before writing Still Life; it won the CWA New Blood Dagger and the Arthur Ellis Award for best first novel.
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Questions readers ask
- What is Still Life like?
- Feels like curiosity and serenity. About morality.
- What should I read after Still Life?
- If you liked Still Life, try A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (Holly Jackson), A Taste for Death (P. D. James) and Here One Moment (Liane Moriarty).
A taste of the feed
Love is not an equation you can solve by keeping your distance.
The people you love weren’t algebra: to be calculated, subtracted, or held at arm’s length across a decimal point.
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder · Holly Jackson
The horror of a cold corpse, delivered in the most sterile, official tone.
ONEThe bodies were discovered at eight forty-five on the morning of Wednesday 18 September by Miss Emily Wharton, a sixty-five-year-old spinster of the parish of St. Matthew’s in Paddington, London, and Darren Wilkes, aged ten, of no particular parish as far as he knew or cared. This unlikely pair of companions had left Miss Wharton’s flat in Crowhurst Gardens just before half past eight to walk the half-mile stretch of the Grand Union Canal to St. Matthew’s Church.
A Taste for Death · P. D. James
Every book she read was a ship sent out by someone who felt alone.
So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.
Matilda · Roald Dahl
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