The novel “The Nature of the Beast” continues a series of investigations by Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. This charming character was created by the pen of Louise Penny, the world's only five-time Agatha Christie Award winner. Not a day goes by without nine-year-old Laurent Lepage writing some fantastic story - about a Martian invasion, a huge cannon, winged monsters he saw in the forest. Of course, none of the residents of the village of Three Pines takes his chatter seriously, including the former senior police inspector Armand Gamache, who settled here after retiring. But the boy disappears, and soon the search party deep in the forest stumbles upon a mysterious find, proving that the monster has, after all, visited these places. People are beginning to suspect that not all of Laurent's stories are pure fiction. Armand Gamache understands: perhaps he himself, by not believing the boy, influenced the fatal course of events. For the first time in Russian!