The Contract: The Three Pines Audiobooks

The unique joy of listening to Louise Penny's books

We’re both big fans of the Inspector Gamache audiobooks, so when Jackie Sherbow, managing editor of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, offered to write about them, we couldn’t say yes fast enough.

As a bonus, this week, we’re excited to share fan art from Maria. We found her work on Twitter and love her interpretations of Inspector Gamache. If you have art you’d like to share, please email us at notesfromthreepine@substack.com.

Are you a fan of the audiobooks? Let us know!

— Aya & Elizabeth

"The contract with the audiobook reader is a really special one."—Robert Bathurst

215 hours. That's how long it takes to experience the Three Pines audiobook collection to date. Somehow, I've enjoyed each book at least twice. Places I've listened to the Gamache audiobooks:

- airports, airplanes

- grocery stores, bodegas

- the East River Ferry

- the subway, Amtrak and MetroNorth

- California, New York (every borough except Staten Island, plus upstate), Connecticut, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania

How did this happen!? I first found Three Pines (or it found me) at a Black Orchid banquet presented by the Wolfe Pack at which Louise Penny was receiving the Nero Award in 2011, but I didn't pick up the audiobooks until I was in bed with the flu last year. Being sick anytime since 2020 is a scary experience, especially when experiencing long-COVID symptoms. Besides, I couldn't open my eyes! I needed a balm, so I put on the next book in my Three Pines queue—and I chose wisely.

Before long, I'd devoured all of the audiobooks, finishing the series to date and then starting at the beginning. I continue to savor and find solace in the audiobooks. A friend and I are both hooked and have been known simply to lie around and listen to them together. But why? What is it about these audiobooks that make them outstanding (aside from the quality of the source material)?

First, of course, the readers. Ralph Cosham, who read the first ten books before he died, became known as "the voice of Gamache" to Three Pines fans. In an interview at the end of How the Light Gets In, Penny and Cosham discuss their friendship and Cosham's process. They reflect upon the sense of knowing each other before actually meeting — connected through the work —and generally gush at each other, which one loves to hear. “I read the first few pages of Still Life, and said to my wife, ‘This is something really special,'" Cosham relates

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"You've become Gamache for them, which is so much better than being Ruth in their heads," Penny asserts, and Ralph breaks in: "Although I like Ruth." But the point is, readers identify him specifically with Gamache, and he intuitively picked up on Penny's inspiration and motivations for the inspector.

In a 2013 piece, AudioFile Magazine's Jessica Lockhart explained, "Cosham plays Gamache with controlled musing and infinite patience and even infuses a clever essence of familiarity by adding a barely perceptible additional syllable each time the contemplative detective begins to speak." (Wait, what? Time to re-re-relisten!)

In the How The Light Gets In interview, Cosham and Penny discussed their "intimate" relationship working together over the previous eight books—and the listener can relate to this intimacy. Unbelievably, Cosham read the stories for the first time while recording; he encountered the plot as we did. He explains how his performance of every passage is informed by what has already come to pass for Three Pines and its inhabitants. "My biggest problem right now," he said, "is not skipping ahead to see what happens."

In the AudioFile discussion, Cosham revealed, "I get emotionally involved in the books I read. Reading was my escape growing up in the aftermath of WWII—the books became movies in my mind. Now, with each narration, I try to create the feeling that you, the listener, and I, the narrator, are discovering this book at the same time.”

Cosham died in 2014 before narrating The Nature of the Beast. Before the start of that book, Penny eulogizes her friend and colleague and introduces the new one:

"When listeners heard Ralph's voice, they knew that they were in good hands and that they would be transported effortlessly to the world of Three Pines. . . ."

". . . Needless to say, we thought long and hard about who would take over for him—not, of course, to replace Ralph, but build on what he created and at the same time make the characters and the setting their own."

In this way we meet "the new voice of Three Pines and Armand Gamache," Robert Bathurst. Known for his work as an actor (including on Downton Abbey), Penny says she trusts Bathurst, and soon the listener does too. Certainly it takes some adjustment, and one misses Ralph’s signature atmospheric and grounded voice. But soon, Bathurst's own nuanced performance gets in our heads.

In his own interview with Jo Reed for AudioFile's Behind the Mic, Bathurst explains how he isn't trying to imitate what Cosham did, but set out to create his own approach—but one can tell he takes the preexisting relationship seriously. Perhaps because I'd so long paired Gamache and Cosham, I think I paid attention to the performances of the other characters a bit more starting with book 11. And I found that Bathurst does an incredibly attentive job. While some Three Pines denizens sort of "come with" their own tone of voice or accent (like Ruth or Steven), others don't—and yet I can always tell who is speaking. Particularly I enjoy Bathurst's performance of Myrna; she is so subtly different from the others.

Bathurst says, "Love is key to it. It's not unsaid, because they often do say they love each other, but there is this unqualified love which runs in it."

And so we find that Cosham and Bathurst approach the work with the following:

         1. A core understanding of the books and characters and a strong fondness for them as well as a respect for the characters' growth.

         2. A guiding motivating principle for their readings. For Cosham, it's the capture of the "movie in the mind," unveiling itself to the reader and offering comfort, entertainment, and escape. For Bathurst, it's the essence of the underlying themes and emotions of the books. For both readers, it's impeccable and loving attention to the details of the characters and setting.

Where can I purchase a pocket Gamache?

         3. A certain gravitas to their reading. Penny's humor comes through, but both of the readers have a patient, steady, thoughtful approach.

In that AudioFile talk, Robet Bathurst hits upon the next few reasons we love the Three Pines audiobooks, which admittedly share reasons we love the books in the first place:

"She's written this series set in a mythical village . . . there's sort of a mystical, spiritual element to it . . . It is a manifesto for how to live well in a cruel world . . . good does exist. . . . Three Pines is a sanctuary."

With this surreal and aspirational ethos informing the readings, something it’s clear Cosham also had at heart (they're both Pisces, just saying), I'm not exaggerating when I claim that putting on the books fills me with more calm than a meditation app; I can (and do) fall asleep to these at night.

In the AudioFile interview, Interviewer Jo Reed hesitates and laughs before professing, "I have to say . . . the character of the village of Three Pines and its inhabitants are so central . . . I love them."  And Bathurst says, "They're very sensual." The other essays in this newsletter will speak to the exquisite food, art, drink, setting in the books, but suffice it to say that it's a great experience to take in these details aurally from both readers. Don't forget the music, which Ralph especially performs to exquisite and often haunting effect, especially in The Beautiful Mystery (monastic chants as well as pop and folk tunes) and How the Light Gets In (the Huron carol. You know!).

And as any true devotee of anything will tell you, it's a wonderful thing to experience a book we love in other mediums (excepting iterations that fail miserably to live up to our imaginations or the original tale). Reading, the act itself, is a solitary experience, even with forums, book clubs, and communities like this one. Listening to the Three Pines books is a connection to the world through Cosham and Bathurst. We can maintain and build our own perception of the books (Cosham’s "movies in the mind"), but we have the opportunity also to take in another's interpretation and energy. Rather than being supplemental to the books, these audiobooks have taken on a fandom and personality of their own. (By the way, The World of Curiosities will be narrated by Bathurst and is slated to be about 15 hours long.)

If I haven't already passed the point of no return in terms of your potential concern about just how healthy it is to be so obsessed with these audiobooks (I know I'm not alone!), I'll close by saying that if Three Pines is an unmapped spiritual—yet very corporeal—sanctuary, the audiobooks are a splendid path to get there.

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Have you listened to all 215 hours?

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Jackie Sherbow serves as the managing editor of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine as well as the editor of Newtown Literary—the literary journal dedicated to the borough of Queens. Jackie is the author of the chapbook Harbinger (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and the founding publisher of THRASH Press. Their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in places like Sierra Nevada Review, Coffin Bell, Luna Luna, and Day One; their short stories have appeared in Mystery Magazine and The Beat of Black Wings anthology. With Emily Hockaday, they are the coeditor of Terror at the Crossroads: Tales of Horror, Delusion, and the Unknown.