Summary

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache inspected 76-year-old Jane Neal’s body in the woods on Thanksgiving Sunday. Within the first paragraph we are made aware that this was an unnatural death. The reader is then taken back to a few days earlier, when Jane was meeting up with her much younger friend and next door neighbor Clara Morrow for coffee. Jane was late due to an incident involving three boys wearing ski masks throwing manure. This kind of incident was a rarity in their small village called Three Pines, a crime free town south of Montreal where people do not lock their doors. During her meeting with Clara, an artist, Jane revealed that she wanted to submit her artwork entitled Fair day for the Arts Williamsburg show of which Clara is on the jury panel. This shocked Clara as Jane has always been very secretive...