It is Winter Carnival in Quebec City, bitterly cold and surpassingly beautiful Chief Inspector Armand Gamache has coation gone hauntingly wrong But violent death is inescapable, even in the apparent sanctuary of the Literary and Historical Society-- where an obsessive historian’s quest for the remains of the founder of Quebec, Samuel de Champlain, ends in murder Could a secret buried with Champlain for nearly 400 years be so dreadful that someone would kill to protect it?