Content Warning: The source material features depictions of traumatic injury, gun violence, and misuse of opioids.

Bury Your Dead is a sweeping detective novel with multiple timelines and locations. While on one level the central preoccupation is fundamental to the genre—who committed a crime, and why—Penny also asks why individuals grieve and experience remorse, and how recovery, or its absence, can shape a person’s future.

The work opens with the reader already aware that Gamache may be facing serious consequences, as the flashback to the factory raid ends with the line: “Too late, Chief Inspector Gamache realized he’d made a mistake” (3). Immediately, Penny shifts timelines, using Reine-Marie Gamache’s anxiety to show that the family has recently experienced a profound trial. What that consists of remains mysterious, though obviously work-related and violent, as Gamache has flashbacks to gunfire and funerals. Penny thus establishes that Gamache is experiencing survivor’s guilt but does not reveal who has died. Soon after, the reader is shown Gamache’s letter from Gabri Dubeau, asking Gamache to reconsider Olivier’s guilt in the murder of the Hermit. Penny reveals that Gamache does doubt Olivier’s guilt—and, more fundamentally, his own fitness to investigate: He turns down invitations to consult on the Renaud case and realizes that only

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