Relentless phone calls interrupt the peace of a warm August morning in Three Pines. Someone has managed to track down Armand Gamache, head of homicide at the Sûreté, as he sits with his wife in their back garden. Reine-Marie watches with increasing unease as her husband refuses to pick up, though he clearly knows who is on the other end. When he finally answers, his rage shatters the calm of their quiet Sunday morning. That's only the first in a sequence of strange events that begin THE GREY WOLF. A missing coat, an intruder alarm, a note for Gamache reading "this might interest you," a puzzling scrap of paper with a mysterious list --- and then a murder. All propel Chief Inspector Gamache and his team toward a terrible realization. Something much more sinister than any one murder or any one case is fast approaching.