Staff Recommendation - A Fatal Grace

A Fatal Grace
by Louise Penny

"A stupid, vapid and vindictive woman" is how one of the residents of Three Pines described CC de Poitiers. Chief Inspector Gamache and his team from the Sûreté du Quebec had trouble finding anyone in the tiny village that had a good word to say about CC. As a result, their suspect list was long. Her henpecked husband, her spineless lover and any of the eccentric residents. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, who we first met in Still Life, came back the village of Three Pines in southern Quebec to find CC's murderer. Gamache renews his acquaintance with the artist couple that eke out a living doing what they love, a poet fixated on death and the gay couple who run a B&B and a bistro as he investigates the latest crime. It was Boxing Day. The villagers met at the legion hall for a community breakfast. Then they headed out to the frozen lake for the annual curling tournament. While everyone cheered the players CC collapsed on the ice. The locals thought it was a heart attack and rushed her to the hospital. The doctor realized that CC had been electrocuted and contacted the Sûreté du Quebec. Gamache and his team have to determine how a woman can be electrocuted while sitting on a frozen lake with a small group watching the annual curling tournament. No one else in the group even received a small electrical jolt, let alone one big enough to kill them. The rest of the villagers were sitting in stands on shore and none of them left their seats. How could someone have killed her? -- recommended by Donna G. -- Loren Corey Eiseley and Bess Dodson Walt Branch Libraries

[ Fatal Grace page on the official Louise Penny web site ]

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