A Fatal Grace (Chief Inspector Gamache)

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Perhaps this is due in part to the approaching Christmas festivities, but certainly the removal of the town ‘bully’ must have something to do with the cheer. Hearing that CC knows important gallery owner Denis Fortin, Clara timidly asks if she would mind showing him her portfolio—which CC disdainfully throws in the trash.

And Gamache, who finally grasps what it meant when the 78-year-old Mother loudly “cleared the house” at the curling match, suddenly knows how the murderer got away with it. No one liked CC de Poitiers – not her daughter, not her husband, not her lover, and certainly not her neighbors.I had assumed the quaint and tiny community in the Quebec Eastern Townships would be a one-off setting for Gamache's inaugural adventure, since he is charged with solving crimes all over the province. That would be more than enough to make me annoyed by this book, but its treatment of the 'good' characters is just as bad -- even worse, in a way, because the nastiness of it is so much more covert. And for a while it seemed that it was only the characters who were being cruel but then I read this passage about a 12 year old girl. Her underarms bulged and flopped and the rolls of her waist made the skintight dress look like a melting strawberry ice cream. But still she seemed to grow fuzzy, then sharp, as though he was looking through a prism at two different women, one beautiful, glamorous, vivacious, and the other a pathetic, dyed-blonde rope, all corded and wound and knotted and rough.

I especially liked chief inspector Armand Gamache and his wife Reine-Marie and I loved the painter, Carol, her fragility and her luminous works; the enigmatic figure, Agent Nichol and the bag lady, Elle, and I could hear with Emilie's ears Tchaikovsky's violin concerto in D.Of course, the accident turns out to be no accident at all, and there are so many people who detested C. A Fatal Grace, by Louise Penny, published in Canada as Dead Cold, is the second novel in the Three Pines Mysteries series, which feature Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, published in 2007.

For all the perplexing mechanics of the murder, and the snowed-in village setting, this is not the usual "cosy" or even a traditional mystery. All of this occurs in the dead of winter and the weather itself becomes an important factor in the story. Gamach is a fascinating man – gentle, compassionate and kind, he also has a strength of character and a way of nutting things out that make him pretty much perfect. I wanted her to get her comeuppance as a thoroughly evil woman rather than achieve a kind of victime status.Speaking of belief, what do you make of the apparent brushes with God: the beggar who loved Clara’s art (which Em maintains she had never seen); Gamache finding God in a diner eating lemon meringue pie; Em’s road worker with the sign saying “Ice Ahead”; Billy Williams, etc. Penny ensures the reader is in the middle of the investigation, watching Gamache’s mind spin as more information comes to light at key moments in the narrative. They usually have thick cables with orange rubber coating, and the clips are massive, not little bitty alligator clips.

More emotion, in depth character analysis, and what is perceived and what is really inside peoples minds. I’m looking for a quote that I thought was from “A Fatal Grace” but may be from “The Cruelest Month”.

Had CC de Poitiers known the end was near she might have been at work instead of in the cheapest room the Ritz in Montreal had to offer.