A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny
My rating: 4 of 5 stars "Everything Makes Sense" Like her first Chief Inspector Gamache novel, Still Life (2005), Louise Penny's second, A Fatal Grace (2006), takes place mostly in Three Pines, the idyllic "simple backwater" village which can be found only by chance or destiny (not appearing on any maps of Quebec). Also like the first, the second begins with a catchy first line: "Had CC de Poitiers known she was going to be murdered she might have bought her husband, Richard, a Christmas gift." But whereas Still Life opens with the murder of a universally loved local Three Pines woman, Jane Neal, this second book begins with the impending murder of a universally disliked outsider, CC de Poitiers. CC is an outwardly cold, inwardly seething 48-year-old businesswoman, a cruel and insensitive person who believes that everyone is cruel and insensitive. The kind of woman who wears boots made from the skins of baby seals. She's just self-published a bogus self-help book called Be Calm, which will teach people how to find happiness by repressing all their emotions--if only the fools will realize the truth and value of her enlightened philosophy. But why did she buy the old Hadley mansion in Three Pines? CC's lover Saul Petrov, her bought photographer, detests her for having frozen his vision of himself and the world, and is planning to escape her control. In addition to this unpleasant couple, we meet again the appealing Three Pines locals from the first book: Clara and Peter Morrow, wife and husband artists (he successful, she unknown); Myrna Landers, the only black person in town, an ex-Montreal psychologist who runs a used book store; Ruth Zardo, the prickly poetess who's just won an award for her latest book I'm FINE; Olivier and Gabri, the witty gay couple who run a bistrot/B&B/antique shop. And an intriguing new trio of locals, "the three graces," three old lady friends, Kaye, Em, and Beatrice (aka Mother Bea). Taking place about a year after the events of the first book, which the locals are still marked by, the second novel delays the entrance of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec, until Chapter 8. Gamache is a fine detective character: in his fifties, he is well-read, vice-free, happily married, and able venture into the minds of other people (even murderers) as well as his own. In addition to loving his work and his team of agents, he is always appalled by death and especially senseless killing. He imparts precepts to his trainees like: always ask when you don't know; never lie to me; listen so hard it hurts; and everything makes sense. Gamache is observant, experienced, wise, empathetic, and intelligent. He is also capable of mistakes, and his debonair man-of-reason second-in-command Jean Guy Beauvoir worries that Gamache is prone to trusting untested young officers (like the disastrous Agent Yvette Nichol in the first novel) to a potentially fatal fault--and he seems to be doing the same thing with young Agent Robert Lemieux in this book. --As the first book turns on a Canadian outdoor activity/sport--hunting/archery--so this one turns on curling. --As the first book is organized thematically around a single motif, stillness, this one is organized around calm (and its opposite). --As the first book is replete with Quebecois culture, so is this one, like eating smoked salmon on X-mas Eve or fresh oysters on New Year's Day or managing extraordinarily cold winters or wondering about how uptight Anglophones are. --As the first book is well-stocked with likely murder suspects and an unexpected culprit, so too is this one. --As the first book deals with a self-contained murder mystery while introducing an over-arching back story concerning the Arnot case that nearly destroyed Gamache's career, so this one deals with a self-contained murder mystery while providing more details about the Arnot case, which is still not over for Gamache and lures readers to read future books in the series. --As the first book is read by Ralph Cosham with his appealing, unassuming, and perfect voice and manner, so too is this one. Penny is good at getting into the heads of her varied people (male, female, old, young, straight, gay, likeable, loathsome, Francophone, Anglophone, big city, small town, wealthy, poor, etc.), and rotates among many of her characters for point of view narration. Going by her first two novels, she does feel most comfortable (or want to spend most time with) creative people: artists, poets, designers, photographers, and so on. If I were to find flaws in Penny's detective and community it would be that perhaps they are too good to be true. Gamache's "mistakes" tend to be errors of trust rather than of ethics or detective work, he is almost too good at coming up with apt quotations, and he even plays a rather heroic volunteer fireman at one point, while Three Pines might be too idyllic a mystery-genre town, too full of interesting, witty, and creative people, too apt to host murders. . . But Penny is a fine writer and mystery genre fans (especially those interested in Quebecois culture and the arts) should like this book. View all my reviews
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