Three Pines is a murder mystery series on
Amazon Prime. It stars
Alfred Molina as
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache based on the novel series by Louise Penny. With his gruff but lovable officers Jean-Guy Beauvoir and single mother officer Isabelle Lacoste, the trio set out to learn the truth around various murders in Three Pines, a fictional village in the Eastern Townships of
Quebec. Alongside this though, the show also tackles a secondary plot that interweaves across the season - the disappearance of an Indigenous woman called Blue that both Gamache and Lacoste are invested in solving.
This series contains examples of:
- Animal Motifs: Gamache is linked often to birds and bird feathers seeing them in dreams or around the sites of the murdered. Blue jays are related to the loss of his parents when he was a child. The series-long mystery he is trying to solve is that of the Indigenous girl Blue Two-Rivers who was also named after the blue jay.
- Bilingual Dialogue: the story takes place in Quebec, and most of the characters are French-Canadian.
- Broken Pedestal: It is unclear whether Gamache's friend and chief Pierre is supportive of him or not. Turns out he is behind the police corruption.
- Asshole Victim: CC de Poitiers is so terrible to the village of Three Pines that Gamache finds that almost everyone had a reason to kill her. Turns out CC had killed her own mother and was abusing her daughter also.
- Dirty Cop: There are hints of a major cover-up from more than one member the Sûreté du Québec over Blue Two-Rivers' death. Isabelle and Gamache have to work quietly as they don't know which officers are involved.
- Fair Cop: Isabelle Lacoste is noticeably attractive and a good detective.
- High-Voltage Death: In "White Out", the victim is electrocuted in front of most of the village. The killer secretly affixes jumper cables to her chair and a generator.
- Rich Bitch: CC de Poitiers in "White Out" enjoys her husband's wealth while cheating on him, is snide and contemptuous of the less wealthy neighbors, profits from stealing ideas from Indigenous people, and is emotionally abusive to her daughter.
