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A Stuga On the Cusp of the Orust Riviera, tucked away next to a hobbit hole in the woods.

A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny

A Fatal Grace - Louise Penny
bookshelves: autumn-2015, tbr-busting-2015, series, published-2006, mystery-thriller, quebec, canada, e-book, books-about-books-and-book-shops
Recommended to Bettie☯ by: Susanna - Censored by GoodReads
Read from November 15, 2014 to September 12, 2015

 



Description: Welcome to winter in Three Pines, a picturesque village in Quebec, where the villagers are preparing for a traditional country Christmas, and someone is preparing for murder.
No one liked CC de Poitiers. Not her quiet husband, not her spineless lover, not her pathetic daughter—and certainly none of the residents of Three Pines. CC de Poitiers managed to alienate everyone, right up until the moment of her death.
When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, of the Sûreté du Québec, is called to investigate, he quickly realizes he's dealing with someone quite extraordinary. CC de Poitiers was electrocuted in the middle of a frozen lake, in front of the entire village, as she watched the annual curling tournament. And yet no one saw anything. Who could have been insane enough to try such a macabre method of murder—or brilliant enough to succeed?
With his trademark compassion and courage, Gamache digs beneath the idyllic surface of village life to find the dangerous secrets long buried there. For a Quebec winter is not only staggeringly beautiful but deadly, and the people of Three Pines know better than to reveal too much of themselves. But other dangers are becoming clear to Gamache. As a bitter wind blows into the village, something even more chilling is coming for Gamache himself.


Opening: Had CC de Poitiers known she was going to be murdered she might have bought her husband, Richard, a Christmas gift. She might even have gone to her daughter’s end of term pageant at Miss Edward’s School for Girls, or ‘girths’ as CC liked to tease her expansive daughter. 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. But the only end she knew was near belonged to a man named Saul.
People are cruel and insensitive



I understand. You can’t spare
anything, a hand, a piece of bread, a shawl
against the cold,
a good word. Lord
knows there isn’t much
to go around. You need it all.

So that's the way it will be - starting with a carrot!

It was Susanna who clued me into this series, HUZZAH! Read book 4 before 2 and 3 because I was caught at an airport with only A Rule Against Murder to dive into, so now I shall take up the slack...

This is the one with a shocking curling match, a stinky dedication, and a weird ball retrieved from a dumpster.

Three Pines: Salvador Dali

Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto in D Major

Although there were the trademark astute one-liners such as: It was almost impossible to electrocute someone these days, unless you were the governor of Texas, it was hard to feel sympathetic to some characters because I had read ahead. Not this book's fault, I know.
Now here’s a good one: 
you’re lying on your deathbed.
You have one hour to live.
Who is it, exactly, you have needed
all these years to forgive?




4* Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #1)
3.5* A Fatal Grace (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #2)
TR The Cruelest Month (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #3)
4* A Rule Against Murder (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #4)