A few days later it is Christmas Eve in Three Pines, with shortbread stars (Louise’s books always make me hungry) and carolers and a midnight service at St. Thomas’s church, where a child starts to sing with angelic purity. The singer is CC’s daughter, wearing a grotesque pink sundress but with bliss on her face. After the service, the whole village can hear CC berating Crie as a “stupid, stupid girl. You humiliated me. They were laughing at you, you know.” CC’s gutless father barely utters a protest. 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. And make friends with what he found there. And he went into the dark, hidden rooms in the minds of others. The minds of killers. And he faced down whatever monsters came at him." Gamache: “I knew then I was in the company of people who loved not only books, but words. Spoken, written, the power of words.” CONCLUSION Each had a tale to relate about how a person – perhaps unknowingly – did something that Gamache or Longpré chose to see as a sign. This got me thinking about signs and whether we stumble on them or whether we choose to see them when we need them. Or whether it’s a little of both. He wondered how long before that world would explode. He hoped he'd be around to see it. But not too close.

Louise Penny Books in Order: Complete Guide to Inspector

It’s a lot like one of those Florida senior villages, where the staff always tries to shut out all the nasty shadows of life. Good hearts get hurt. Good hearts get broken, Armand. And then they lash out. ― Louise Penny, A Fatal Grace The People of Quebec People are cruel and insensitive, she'd said. Cruel and insensitive. It wasn't all that long ago, before he'd taken the contract to freelance as CC's photographer and lover, that he'd actually thought the world a beautiful place. Each morning he'd wake early and go into the young day, when the world was new and anything was possible, and he'd see how lovely Montreal was. He'd see people smiling at each other as they got their cappuccinos at the café, or their fresh flowers or their baguettes. He'd see the children in autumn gathering the fallen chestnuts to play conkers. He'd see the elderly women walking arm in arm down the Main.Now that I have read every book in the series, I am even more convinced that the village of Three Pines sounds like a perfect place to live and the characters in these books feel like people I have known for years. Every book gets better and I just hope this series never ends! Though a lot of Gamache’s investigation is on the technical side of things, the human aspect also proves itself to be rather important. The village isn’t exactly big, and neither is our list of suspects with whom we have the chance to become acquainted with quite intimately before the end of it all. Consequently, Louise Penny took great care in shaping, evolving and unwrapping her characters.

A Fatal Grace: Thick in Laughter; Layered in Meaning | The A Fatal Grace: Thick in Laughter; Layered in Meaning | The

In Penny's second mystery, we are introduced to the odious C.C. de Poitiers, a woman so vile and insufferable no one is sorry when she is electrocuted in a freakish "accident" during a Christmas curling match at Three Pines. Of course, the accident turns out to be no accident at all, and there are so many people who detested C.C., Gamache will have his hands full sorting through all the potential suspects. And beside him an enormous child was wearing a sleeveless sundress of the brightest pink. Her underarms bulged and flopped and the rolls of her waist made the skintight dress look like a melting strawberry ice cream. It was grotesque. Who published it again?' He couldn't seem to help himself. She was silent. 'Oh, I remember now,' he said. 'No one wanted it. That must have been horrible.' He paused for a moment, wondering whether to twist the knife. Oh, what the hell. Might as well. 'How'd that make you feel?' Did he imagine the wince?

CONCLUSION

The setup for this book is very long and the main thing the author established was how cruel some characters were and how others were affected by cruelty. This section was so unnecessarily long that I wanted to give up on the book. The only reason I didn't was because I really enjoyed the first book. The execution method in question is what prompted the need for Gamache’s expertise on this one. The victim was electrocuted in the middle of a frozen lake while watching the annual curling tournament, right in front of the entire village. Naturally, none of them saw anything, and if anyone did, they might just keep it to themselves considering CC’s reputation. And I love it. The village of Three Pines and its stubborn, gentle (and occasionally murderous) folk who insist on living in a place that would kill you if you ran out of firewood. The inspiration for Armand Gamage is her late husband Michael to whom she was married for 20 years. The cozy mystery, which aims to charm as much as challenge, has a graceful practitioner of that artful dodge in Louise Penny." - The New York Times Book Review