Quote:
Originally Posted by SensualPoet
Louise Penny, in her second Chief Inspector Armand Gamache novel, A Fatal Grace (published also as "Dead Cold"), is a brilliant follow-up to Still Life where murder returns to the cheerful village Three Pines in the eastern townships of Quebec, an hour's drive or so from Montreal.
It is a year later, and the austere, aloof Hadley home, had known such grief, has been purchased by CC de Poitiers and her husband Richard Lyon. CC is a glamourous, late forties bleached blonde with ambition far, far exceeding her talent. She annoys, belittles, betrays, and alienates everyone in her path, and in her circle: even her not-so-secret lover despises her. What a fine choice for a murder victim!
The great characters of the original novel return: Ruth Zardo, a curmudgeonly poet; Clara Morrow, a painter struggling to invest the real world with a shred of the beauty of her inner world and canvasses; her husband, Peter, also an artist by trade; Gabri and Olivier, the gay couple who run the B&B and popular bistro in Three Pines; Myrna, a black therapist who has settled here to recharge; Gamache himself, an immensely warm, thoughtful man who struggles every moment to do his best for those he cares about -- including murderers whom he inevitably comes to care about as he gets inside their heads and hearts; and the others of his crew, including the delightfully off kilter Jean-Guy Beauvoir and the return of Yvette Nichol and a new officer, Robert Lemieux. Penny's magic is to share each character's inner voices and asides, commenting on scenes from multiple perspectives.
These are murder mysteries, and there is endless delight trying to guess how the clues, sometimes obvious and sometimes not, fit together, only to have them confirmed, then dashed and a new solution presented in the nick of time as the tale comes to a close. This is virtuoso stuff and hugely pleasurable to read. Bravo!
Available for your Kindle in the US or Kindle in Canada (as "Dead Cold") for $10 and $8.50 respectively; the book appears temporarily withdrawn from Kobo in Canada. |
I found "Still life" for 2.99$ on Amazon so I will have to read it on my iPhone
"A trick of the light" is the only one available on Kobo for the moment, I hope they will bring them all back so I can buy them for my Kobo