A Fatal Grace (Chief Inspector Gamache)

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I am not sure how many times I’ve read A Fatal Grace , but I still find it as extraordinary as I did back in 2006.

We are also treated to more background on some of my favorite characters from the last book, Clara and Myrna, plus poetry from the irascible Ruth. I don't think I could continue to read an author who would use such strong terms to describe an abused child. As Gamache and the others notice the raw distaste that others had for CC, they cannot help but wonder why much of CC’s life cannot be substantiated.Her underarms bulged and flopped and the rolls of her waist made the skintight dress look like a melting strawberry ice cream.

That Quebec cold, and a later snowstorm, are keys to the chill that runs through this otherwise kind of warm, cozy murder mystery filled with (mostly) likable locals. Inspector Gamache investigates after CC de Poitiers, a sadistic socialite, is fatally electrocuted at a Christmas curling competition in the small Québécois town of Three Pines. I was shocked by Clara ignoring the homeless woman when she's supposed to be so loving and generous and connected, but nobody else was. He got out of the car and stared down at the village, each home glowing with warm and beckoning light, promising protection against a world sometimes too cold.

And it strikes me that, while certainly there would be exceptions to the rule, most of the people who enjoy hanging out in Scudder's New York aren't going to want to spend a lot of time in Gamache's Three Pines, and vice-versa. The Three Pines characters, now seen through Gamache's eyes and not forced to make it on their own, regained their gloss. They were as warm and brilliant and funny as you might imagine from reading Louise’s books, and it’s been a joy to work with her ever since. I have read the life of Eleanor of Aquitane, and while she was a remarkable woman, she has never rode into any battle, especially not bare-breasted.

Although I am well behind many in reading Louise Penny’s series, i enjoyed my first visit to Three Pines making this an easy choice for vacation reading. The writing is beautiful, poetic in places, and it managed to transport me to the snow covered Three Pines, a place I plan to revisit soon. It wasn't so bad that women rarely looked at him any more or that he'd begun to consider trading his downhill skis for cross country, or that his GP had scheduled his first prostate test. The book could well have been a novel about a small-town community without the murder mysteries to turn it into a picturesque magical, although imaginery, place. And her warmth and human compassion is especially endearing, as is her supercharged inspiration in concocting such an endlessly labyrinthine structure for her book.Not her quiet husband, not her spineless lover, not her pathetic daughter—and certainly none of the residents of Three Pines. She has also created a richly-imagined setting in the charming Canadian village of Three Pines, which is located somewhere just south of Montreal. Anyone with a single brain cell would see jumper cables clipped to a metal chair and their alarm bells would deafen everybody in the town.

Are there any significant clues to be found in the video cassette of The Lion in Winter that turned up in CC’s garbage after the murder? Gamache was the best of them, the smartest and bravest and strongest because he was willing to go into his own head alone, and open all the doors there, and enter all the dark rooms. Then a new team member arrives unexpectedly: Agent Yvette Nichol—”the rancid, wretched, petty little woman who’d almost ruined their last case”—apparently sent by the Superintendent of the Sûreté. By the same token, people do exist who struggle to be generous, compassionate, kind and loving, who ignore homeless people and then feel bad about it and go back to bring them coffee -- but they don't get epiphanies as a result, and they don't have an admiring audience constantly thinking about how wonderful they are. No goddamned enlightenment,' she'd said to Saul in her Montreal office the day a batch of rejection letters arrived, ripping them into pieces and dropping them on the floor for the hired help to clean up.In Still Life I was introduced to the inspector and his team and fell in love with Three Pines, the little village where the action takes place. I want to believe the series does in fact get better but it will probably take me quite a while to pick up the next book. These people never act silently; there's always an audience, so there's always a pay-off -- when Clara does an act of, again, basic human kindness (in giving Elle/L some food) she ends up believing that God has personally come to earth to reassure her about her art. At the same time, he is assisting in another totally unrelated murder, that of a street person who is killed in Montreal.