Review: A Fatal Grace

Author: Louise Penny
Format: audio -8 discs (10 hrs), 368 pages equivalent
Characters: Armand Gamache, Jean Guy Beauvoir
Subject: murder in a small town
Setting: Three Pines, outside Montreal
Series: The Three Pines Mysteries
Genre: mystery, detectives
Source: public library audio book



Once again, Louise Penny takes us to that idyllic village in the Pines outside Montreal, where we all want to go on our vacation to experience the beauty, the quiet, the inhabitants whom we are beginning to regard now as friends.  In this 2nd of the Three Pines Mystery series, we even begin to like that eccentric old lady Ruth, the poet, the head of the volunteer fire department.

Inspector Gamache and his team must find out who killed a woman who was electrocuted on a frozen pond while watching the town's annual Boxing Day curling match.

The fact that absolutely no one in the town liked the victim, or even seemed to know much about her, makes the job even harder.  Penny is beginning to hit her stride in this one, as she offers us several different possibilities for the perpetrator, introduces some new characters, and expands on the character of Armand Gamache that we met in her first book "Still Life."

When we finally figure it out (or did we?) there's still several chapters left, and we find perhaps we didn't get it right after all.

I listened to this in audio and it's such a treat to hear the bi-lingual give and take, the elegance of the Quebecois as they go about day to day life.  To read (or listen) to these books is to fall in love with characters, a town, a region. I can't wait to read more.


Challenge: Supoort Your Local Library, Audio books, Thrillers Suspence and Mystery