How the Light Gets In / Louise Penny 405 pp.

I can see why Louise Penny and her detective, Chief Inspector Gamache of the Surete du Quebec (metro-area Montreal), are so popular.  Penny has written a smart but accessible mystery  that's carefully constructed to maintain suspense and interest.  An older woman is murdered in her Montreal home with no obvious motive.  Gamache turns to her recent social contacts, which happen to be with a group of his old friends in the picturesque village of Three Pines.  When he learns that the woman was once world famous, his way becomes clearer.  Or it would, except that he's simultaneously dealing with a sinister consipiracy at the highest levels of the Quebec government.

All of the above is true.  What I didn't say in Staff Picks is that Penny's writing is technically smooth but has a practiced feel.  Most of the whodunit aspects were fairly easy to predict.  And reading about the village of Three Pines was like leafing through an L.L. Bean catalog, with a few mildly quirky characters thrown in.  There's loads of food and drink description that feels as though it's meant to appeal to a focus group.    At some point it's hard to care whether a character is drinking hot chocolate with or without a peppermint stick.