• Dave Simpson
• The gardens at Manoir Hovey

The first and only time I met Louise Penny, I was sitting in the front row of her author talk at a church in Burlington. Finished with her address, she left the podium to clamorous applause from several hundred devoted fans. As she passed me on her way to the book-signing table, she unexpectedly reached out and took my hand, and I burst into tears. I felt as though I'd just had an audience with the queen.

Other fans of the Canadian crime novelist and her best-selling Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series may sympathize with my fangirl reaction. After 18 books and counting, they — we —feel like we're part of the community: the fictional village of Three Pines in Québec's Eastern Townships, full of eccentric characters, incredible meals and all of humanity's struggles. And Penny is our queen.

Three Pines carries the mystique of a "place apart"; it doesn't appear on any map or GPS app, and characters have trouble finding it throughout the series. It's a little like Brigadoon — if, when Brigadoon rose from the mist once a century, a bunch of people got murdered there.

• Courtesy of Mikael Theimer
• Louise Penny

Luckily for Penny's many rabid fans, the real-life setting of the books is a lot more accessible: The author makes no secret of the fact that she modeled her fictional village on the area surrounding her current home in Knowlton, Québec. Given a chance to visit, I couldn't book a tour fast enough.

And yes, I did get lost on my way there, less than two hours from Burlington. I'm still not sure how that happened.

The Inspector Gamache series has sold more than 10 million copies in North America, according to Publishers Weekly. Portions of it became the Prime Video miniseries "Three Pines" (see "On Screen") — though the crew shot the village's exteriors not in the area of the tour but in Saint-Armand, closer to the border — and, for this fan, it's an inadequate interpretation of Penny's oeuvre.

Despite the hand-over-the-heart response you're likely to get when talking about Penny's books to her fans, these aren't "cozy" mysteries. As head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec provincial police service and an eventual resident of Three Pines, Gamache wages continuous battle against the "non-limits of evil," as Penny described it to Canada's Globe and Mail. He grapples with opioid trafficking, corruption and so many murders — along with his own demons — while acting as the stories' moral center.

Those gritty elements reflect Penny's background as a journalist and radio host in an 18-year career with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She didn't become an author until her forties, when her now-deceased husband, Michael Whitehead, the inspiration for the personality of Armand Gamache, encouraged her to write full time.

• Dave Simpson
• Hallway to the sanctuary of Abbaye de Saint-Benoît-du-Lac.

While you can plan a self-guided itinerary from the ample information available to Three Pines seekers online, only one locally owned and operated tour takes you to eight hours' worth of sites corresponding to locations in the books. Endorsed by Penny herself, Three Pines Tours is coming out of the pandemic strong; according to the owners, this year's bookings are triple last year's.

Once we were all assembled in the starting point of Fulford, a village that is part of the larger Lac-Brome, my tour group of five, plus our gracious guide, piled into a "Three Pines Tours"-emblazoned van. Wearing our bright green "What Would Gamache Do?" bracelets, we headed for nearby Georgeville.

We admired the exterior of the Old Mansion House — inspiration for the infamous "old Hadley house" in the books and now a vacation rental — before continuing to St. George's Anglican Church. Dating back to 1866, it's one of several area houses of worship that Penny blended into her fictional St. Thomas' Church. Diehards might lament the absence of a stained-glass tribute to soldiers there, but for this reader, it was easy to picture Ruth, Rosa and Armand sitting in a pew.

After a noncanonical but sensory-fulfilling visit to the Bigelow Pioneer Garden, we crossed the street to Magasin Général Georgeville, doppelgänger to Monsieur Beliveau's store in the books. Although officially a "convenience store," the outlet sells a dizzying assortment of items, from high-end gourmet foods to common household staples. We sampled the pastries baked on-site.

• Dave Simpson
• Three Pines mural and bench, dedicated to Michael Whitehead, outside Brome Lake Books

It took a beautiful 30-minute drive around Lake Memphremagog to reach Abbaye de Saint-Benoît-du-Lac. The 20th-century Benedictine monastery is currently home to roughly two dozen monks who produce ciders and compotes from their own orchards, as well as award-winning cheeses. Although the abbey is the model for Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups in The Beautiful Mystery, Penny based her fictional order on an extinct brotherhood, not the monastery's actual denizens. She did spend a few days in residence there, however, researching the sights, sounds and rhythms of monastic life. We arrived in time to hear the brothers' glorious chanting as they gathered for their midday mass.

Lunch followed on the terrace of Manoir Hovey, overlooking its stunning gardens on the shores of Lake Massawippi in North Hatley. The five-star Relais & Châteaux property is the inspiration for Manoir Bellechasse, where Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, celebrate their anniversary each year.

In a lovely echo, Penny and her late husband were married in the manor's elegant library. It's also where Penny's friends Bill and Hillary Clinton stay when they visit, and I noted a copy of State of Terror, the novel Penny cowrote with Hillary, on a shelf in the library.

The tour stopped all too briefly at Musée Lac-Brome, a local heritage collection that deserves several hours of wandering we couldn't spare. But the haste was justified by the final two stops: Livres Lac Brome (or Brome Lake Books) in Knowlton and La Rumeur Affamée in Sutton.

• Angela Simpson
• Louise Penny titles at Brome Lake Books

Run by personal friends of Penny's, the bookstore hosts all of her book launches and is perhaps the most touristy place on the tour, with an entire corner devoted to Three Pines books and merchandise. Even there, though, the connection is respectfully acknowledged and celebrated rather than exploited.

Besides the murders, another defining feature of Three Pines is the food: a croissant and a café au lait; a duck, brie and fig confit sandwich at the local bistro; a slice of tarte poire Hélène at a nearby manoir. These are not books to read on an empty stomach. (Penny has helpfully corralled recipes for some of the dishes mentioned in her books into "The Nature of the Feast," a downloadable PDF on her website.)

The food of "Three Pines" turned out to be as good as I imagined. Sarah's Boulangerie in the books was inspired by gourmet épicerie La Rumeur Affamée, which boasts a mouthwatering selection of pastries, cheeses, wines and breads. I left with a box of tarts and a single pet de soeurs — literally, a "nun's fart" — a sticky Québécois treat made from leftover pie dough that is available at the market only during maple season. We ended the day with local wine, sparkling cider and cheeses at Le Pleasant Hôtel & Café in Sutton.

Even for visitors who haven't read the entire Gamache series — as my husband and tour partner has — the area offers many pleasures (see "Eat, Drink, Eastern Townships"). Our driver kept stopping on the side of the road so we wouldn't miss any of the stunning views of lakes, mountains or fields of lupine.

Leaving Livres Lac Brome, we crossed the street to see three fledgling pine trees that were recently planted on the town's small green as an homage to what the books have done for the area. Three women saw our small group from the sidewalk and shouted, "Three Pines!" Clearly, pilgrims recognize fellow pilgrims.

As we doubled back to meet the women, they started excitedly talking over one another: "We just met Louise Penny!" "We met her while eating lunch in the pub down the street!" "She insisted on taking a photo with us!"

They looked completely starstruck — and a little misty-eyed. I just smiled. I totally get it.