Excerpt from The Nature of the Beast

I am getting the final formatting done on In the Tick of Time and getting it ready to publish! Watch for the announcement here in the near future.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme. Read the rules at Books and a Beat. Anyone can play along!

I enjoyed reading The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny, book 11 of the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache Series, a thriller set in the backwoods of Quebec, Canada. The audiobook was apparently read by a different narrator than the first ten books in the series (who passed away) and I found his pronunciation of a number of words to be odd. Perhaps a British actor was not the best choice for a book sprinkled with Quebecois French words and names. And apparently no one involved in the production knew of the proper pronunciation of the Canadian intelligence agency, CSIS, which is not sea-ess-EYE-ess, but SEA-siss.

The book itself, however, is a complex cold war/political thriller, and was thoroughly enjoyable.

Laurent ripped, and ripped, and tore. Until a shaft of sunlight penetrated the overgrowth, the undergrowth, and he saw what was in there. What had been hiding in there longer than Laurent had been alive.

His eyes widened.

“Wow.”

Louise Penny, The Nature of the Beast

Hardly a day goes by when nine year old Laurent Lepage doesn’t cry wolf. From alien invasions, to walking trees, to winged beasts in the woods, to dinosaurs spotted in the village of Three Pines, his tales are so extraordinary no one can possibly believe him. Including Armand and Reine-Marie Gamache, who now live in the little Quebec village.

But when the boy disappears, the villagers are faced with the possibility that one of his tall tales might have been true.

And so begins a frantic search for the boy and the truth. What they uncover deep in the forest sets off a sequence of events that leads to murder, leads to an old crime, leads to an old betrayal. Leads right to the door of an old poet.

And now it is now, writes Ruth Zardo. And the dark thing is here.

A monster once visited Three Pines. And put down deep roots. And now, Ruth knows, it is back.

Armand Gamache, the former head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec, must face the possibility that, in not believing the boy, he himself played a terrible part in what happens next.