A Fatal Grace
by Louise Penny
Louise Penny's second volume in the increasingly popular Inspector Gamache series is once again set in the small Canadian town of Three Pines, just north of the U.S. border. When a brittle, unpleasant domineering woman is killed by electrocution while attending a curling match on a bitterly cold day, shortly after Christmas, Gamache and his team of Surete investigators is called in from Quebec to investigate. Nobody liked her, nearly everybody had a reason to hate her or even wish her dead; but there's more to the killing than meets the eye. Equal parts cozy and police procedural, the Inspector Gamache mysteries feature colorful casts of well-rounded characters. Gamache, himself, is an immensely likeable man, as are many of the routine denizens of Three Pines (introduced in Still Life). The brutally cold winter described in this volume (it was originally entitled Dead Cold) is well-realized, and the mystery is crafty. Penny has a penchant for revealing all the clues as you're going along, but still often catching you by surprise in the final few pages. A sidebar mystery is dealt with, in part, in this volume, as we begin to peel away the layers of a work-releated crisis that Gamache lived through several years earlier. Excellent, flavorful mystery...I highly recommend it! [If you enjoy this, you may also like the traditional classic mysteries of Agatha Christie.] -- recommended by Scott C. - Bennett Martin Public Library
[ official Louise Penny web site ]
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