The Beautiful Mystery

The Beautiful Mystery is a mystery novel by the Canadian writer Louise Penny, published in 2012. It is the eighth book featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec, and it is set almost entirely inside a closed religious community.

The monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups is a small, self-sufficient establishment in a remote part of Quebec, home to two dozen monks who live by prayer and work and who have no contact with the outside world. They are famous despite themselves, because a recording of their Gregorian chant became popular, and the effect the singing has on listeners is the reason the press calls it the beautiful mystery.

When the choir director is killed, the heavy door is unlocked for Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and the two of them find that the silence of the place conceals disagreements of long standing. Their investigation is complicated by the fact that every witness is a member of the same community, that the abbot and the monks have their own ideas about what the police should be told, and that the two detectives are themselves in the middle of a quarrel that has been building for several books.