This is the eighth volume in Penny's acclaimed mystery series featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamiche and his second-in-command, Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir of the Sûreté du Québec.
Each installment in the series features a musical motif; in this mystery, Gamache and Beauvoir are called to investigate the murder of a monk in the monastery of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups (Saint Gilbert Among the Wolves), hidden deep in the Canadian wilderness miles from the nearest settlement. Here two dozen cloistered monks live a simple life of work and prayer. They grow vegetables, raise chickens, make chocolate-covered blueberries to sell --- and they sing. The monks have recently been rediscovered by the outside world, after releasing an album of Gregorian chant. Their glorious voices, raised in these ancient religious songs, have had a powerful effect on people all over the world. The murdered monk was the choir director. His proposal to record another album, and send the monks out into the world as musical missionaries, created a painful schism in the once peaceful community and resulted in his murder. The only suspects are his brother monks.
Gamache is also concerned about Beauvoir's mental state, as Jean-Guy has only just recovered from an addiction to painkillers brought on by the trauma he suffered in a previous case, in which a number of officers under Gamache's command were injured or killed. Both he and Gamache have reason to suspect that the tragedy was engineered by corruption at the highest levels of the Sûreté. When one of the Superintendents they suspect is involved in the corruption suddenly descends upon the monastery and begins to interfere in the investigation, the Chief Inspector fears that his enemies are targeting Beauvoir in order to destroy Gamache before he can expose their crimes.
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