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A Fatal Grace: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel: 2

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This book sealed the deal on my deciding to continue on with the series as I was nicely surprised by the second offering. With the help of an idea from Clara about the discarded video, the case seems to be coming together, when a raging fire breaks out at Saul’s chalet, and the unlikely trio of Gamache, Beauvoir, and Agent Nichol try to rescue him. A cozy mystery, one might say, except that seems a little too light-weight for the quality of Penny’s writing and the distinctiveness of her characters. He'd climbed into the tree, almost feeling tickled by its rough bark, as if he had been sitting on his grandfather's lap and snuggling into his unshaven face.

Sitting at the front of the crowd, the victim stands up, touches the chair in front of her and is promptly electrocuted. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Heading meaning Three Pines reminds me of the movie Fargo, the people you met but this place Three Pines is so warm and inviting you don't want to leave, or put your book down as you wrap yourself up in the investigation with Chief Inspector Gamache. Heck, I may remember a dog or two getting some thoughts in although it could be that I'm just remembering Gamache translating doggie thoughts.

It’s a perfect setting for the last job Saul intends to do for CC, who wants pictures of herself “frolicking among the natives at Christmas. Oh, and her house is full of not only Czech but any other random eastern european relatives, because Czech, Polish, Russian, Hungarian are just all the fucking same? And there’s the “three graces,” connected to some older women friends that are central to the story. I love the small village vibes, I love a lot of the characters there, the main Inspector and the French Canadian bits made me feel at home.

I’d also like to add that Armand Gamache is a nice change from the usual run of police detectives in that he has a very happy marriage and, apart from enjoying his food a little too much, has no apparent vices. 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. The psychological analysis is all wrong; people don’t act like this, even if they are completely mean.While not known personally to Gamache or his wife, her presence in Montreal’s downtown core could not be missed. Meanwhile, a storm is brewing at Gamache's headquarters because of fall out from the mysterious Arnot case (which the reader first read about in the last book and finally gets to learn about in this one). An article in a Montreal style magazine had described him as a 'hot' photographer, and CC always went for the best. I don't mean that to sound as dismissive as it probably does, and again, I understand that there are large numbers of readers who would love to live in Three Pines, but I'd probably go stark raving mad in less than a week. As you wrote, there is so much more to be found in one of Louise Penny’s books than can be noted in one read-through.

Louise Penny has become a firm favorite in the murder mystery genre and I just loved to be home in the Three Pines village of Quebec again with all the characters welcoming me. Within minutes Gamache and his second-in-command, Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir, are on their way to Three Pines, to investigate the very odd death of CC de Poitiers. Thank you again, Hope, for getting us off to an excellent start in our re-examination of A Fatal Grace, and joining in on our discussions. I remember how thrilling it was when she did win—but what I had forgotten, until Louise mentioned it recently, was that the awards banquet happened to fall on my birthday. With a cast of recurring quirky characters who make the town bistro the center of their lives, I have a feeling I will be back in Three Pines for the long haul.

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. Clara’s joy at the Christmas windows is disrupted by a filthy pile of blankets that turns out to be a beggar throwing up. After Gamache admires The Three Graces, Clara’s painting of Mother and the two other elderly women who are her best friends in Three Pines, she tells him about her poisonous encounter with CC at Ogilvy’s—and he quietly adds Clara’s name to the long list of suspects.

CC de Poitiers is fairly new in town, and definitely not a friend to any – not even those who had tried to make an effort to welcome this hateful, self-centered woman. Meanwhile, in “the snow globe that was Three Pines,” CC’s 14-year-old daughter, Crie, has sewn her own chiffon snowflake costume for her school’s Christmas pageant, “to surprise Mommy. 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. So much more comforting to see bad in others; gives us all sorts of excuses for our own bad behavior. When Saul’s photos are developed, they somehow do not include any shots from the time of the murder.And as eager as Saul seems to be to start a new, better life in Three Pines, he still has one undeveloped roll of film that he hastily throws in the fireplace when Gamache and his team visit him at the chalet he has rented. Jean Guy is also worried about old evils resurfacing from the Arnot case and Nichol being their spy and representative. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. Although there were the trademark astute one-liners such as: It was almost impossible to electrocute someone these days, unless you were the governor of Texas, it was hard to feel sympathetic to some characters because I had read ahead.

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