Louise Penny’s Bury Your Dead continued its winning ways at the Wolfe Pack’s Dec. 3, 2011 Black Orchid Banquet in New York City. This sixth book in Penny’s Chief Inspector Armand Gamache mystery series received the society’s Nero Award.
The Nero Award, won last year by Brad Parks, recognizes the best work of mystery fiction written in the tradition of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe stories. Other finalists for the 2011 award were Tess Gerritsen’s Ice Cold (Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles, book 8), Gayle Lynds’ The Book of Spies, Al Roker’s The Midnight Show Murders (Billy Blessing, book 2) and John Verdon’s Think of a Number (Dave Gurney, book 1).
Penny’s Bury Your Dead has won several top crime fiction awards during 2011. These include the Best Novel Anthony award, the Macavity Best Novel Award, the Dilys Award the Agatha Award for Best Novel and the Arthur Ellis Best Crime Novel Award.
Bury Your Dead finds the compassionate Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec involved in murder investigations on two separate fronts. In Quebec City he seeks the killer of Augustin Renaud, whose body has been discovered in the basement of the Literary and Historical Society. Meanwhile, doubts about the outcome of his last case (The Brutal Telling) impel him to send his colleague Jean Guy Beauvoir back to Three Pines for further investigation.
Other titles in Penny’s Inspector Gamache series have also been award winners. The series debut novel, Still Life (2005) received Arthur Ellis, Barry, Anthony and Dilys awards as well as the New Blood Dagger. Dead Cold (2006), book two in the series, won an Agatha Award for Best Novel, as did Penny’s third series title, The Cruellest Month (2007).
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