It's spring and Three Pines is re-emerging after the harsh winter. But not everything buried should come alive again.

Not everything lying dormant should return. But something has. As the villagers prepare for a special celebration, Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir find themselves increasingly worried.

A young man and woman have reappeared in the Surete du Quebec investigators' lives after many years. The two were young children when their troubled mother was murdered, leaving them damaged, shattered. Now they've arrived in the village of Three Pines.

But to what end? Gamache and Beauvoir's memories of that tragic case, the one that first brought them together, come rushing back. Did their mother's murder hurt them beyond repair? Have those terrible wounds, buried for decades, festered and are now about to erupt? As Chief Inspector Gamache works to uncover answers, his alarm grows when a letter written by a long dead stone mason is discovered. In it the man describes his terror when bricking up an attic room somewhere in the village.

'Enthralling ...With beautifully drawn characters, this is crime writing of the highest order' DAILY MAIL

'A satisfying and multi-layered mystery, in Penny's excellent series' IRISH INDEPENDENT

'Louise Penny is on peak form ... a grown-up, timely thriller that considers the nature of cowardice ... merges the personal and professional life of her detective with equal skill and wit' THE TIMES

'A great sense of place and characterisation ...very much a book that will make you think' SHOTS