A Fatal Grace: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel: 2

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I’m not going to discuss the plot, other than to say that the unpleasant woman who was murdered was mourned by nobody, and her impending doom is mentioned in the first sentence. There are a few scary moments, but this is not a thriller. It is a just a good story told in good company. Reading this during a steamy Australian summer is an interesting experience. Here it’s the kind of weather when you find yourself stripped down to barely acceptable clothing and opening the fridge or freezer a little more often than necessary. There, in the Canadian winter, you have to pile on the layers to try to retain what body heat there is, becoming barely acceptable in another ‘fashion’. He got out of bed, leaving CC to stare at her book, her real lover. He looked at her and she seemed to go in and out of focus.

There’s a lot of references to film and literature, so it’s a literary mystery; Gamache watches The Lion in Winter--there’s a Richard Lion in the story--we reference Eleanor of Aquitane, and Leonard Cohen! And there’s the “three graces,” connected to some older women friends that are central to the story. There are central mother-daughter stories. And curling jokes throughout. CC was a despised woman. Obnoxious, cruel, -she was maddeningly bad news- to the people who knew who she was, but did not reveal the secret. I am not sure this is a particularly coherent review, but here's a try about my problems with the book:The story takes a number of twist and turns and, again, I can understand its appeal. But I did have a lot of trouble buying into the way the Three Pines murder occurred; it just seemed completely implausible to me and unnecessarily complicated. As one of the characters asked, why go to all that trouble? Why not simply shoot her or something?

But at his core he believed the world a lovely place. And his photographs reflected that, catching the light, the brilliance, the hope. And the shadows that naturally challenged the light. Isn’t this yet another return to the flawed Golden Age Theory? The novel is great, but this idea bugs me. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache solves more murders while surrounded by the sparkling personalities that compose the small town of Three Pines in Canada. Well, CC died, electrocuted on a frozen lake while the entire village was there, curling, and Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, of the Sûreté du Québec, arrived in Three Pines again. The whosdunit was on!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. 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." A gem of a book....a beautifully told, lyrically written story of love, life, friendship, and tragedy.” — Booklist (starred review) Would Gamach and his team be able to find the answers to this strange and baffling murder? He’d not encountered anything quite like it before…