KNOWLTON, Quebec _ Louise Penny adores her adopted village of Knowlton in Quebec's Eastern Townships. And she's delighted that her Three Pines mystery series has inspired fans to make the trek southeast from Montreal, searching for sites mentioned in her books and hoping, magically, to stumble into the real Three Pines.
In reality, Knowlton and surrounding towns seem more than happy to embrace the celebrity status gained via their most famous resident. "Bienvenue a Three Pines," welcome signs on business doors say. Brome Lake Books, owned by Danny McAuley and Lucy Hoblyn, Penny's close friends, has become a first stop for visitors.
The bookstore was smaller (it has moved and enlarged twice) and Knowlton was quieter when Penny published "Still Life," the first book in the Three Pines series, in 2005. In it, a murder brought senior cop Gamache and his team, including right-hand man Jean-Guy Beauvoir, from Montreal to a tiny village in southeast Quebec, so far off the map that it was almost invisible, and filled with charming eccentrics _ and at least one killer.
