Chief Inspector Armand Gamache has faced twenty investigations steeped in the secrets of Three Pines. In Miss Wolcott’s Ghost, the twenty-first novel in Louise Penny’s beloved series, published October 20 by Minotaur Books, the secret is more than a century old — and it begins with a phone call in the dead of night.

“There’s a body in Lost Nation,” the caller says, speaking on Clara Morrow’s phone — and then the line goes dead. The body is found in a long-abandoned cemetery, dressed in clothing from over a century ago and lying on a grave dated May 29, 1914. Gamache’s investigation reaches back to the sinking of the Empress of Ireland, to the lost documents of a female Victorian botanist, and to a plant not seen in a hundred years — the “Miss Wolcott’s Ghost” of the title. Kirkus Reviews praised the novel as a “superpowered mystery shrouded in mysticism and history,” and the Christian Science Monitor found Penny in top form. The audiobook is narrated by Alfred Molina.

Few mystery writers command Penny’s readership. Her books have sold more than 18 million copies and been translated into more than thirty languages; she is a member of both the Order of Canada and the Ordre national du Québec, and she co-wrote the thriller State of Terror with Hillary Rodham Clinton. She lives in a village south of Montreal, not far in spirit from the fictional Three Pines.

At 416 pages, Miss Wolcott’s Ghost is Penny doing what she does best — braiding a contemporary murder into history’s forgotten corners, and letting Gamache’s decency light the way through. It is available now, priced at about $30.

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