A Fatal Grace

 

A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny, 320 pgs.

It's Christmas time in Three Pines, a quaint village in the forest of Quebec. Snow is falling on the picturesque countryside. The townsfolk are falling back into their traditions a little over a year after the murder of their dear friend. Everyone is preparing for a normal year of gift exchanges and communal meals, when a new member of the community is murdered at the annual parish curling match in a very peculiar manner. Chief Inspector Gamache returns to the town with his posse of Surete officers and attempts to unravel this befuddling case, learning that a frozen heart can be just as deadly as a winter freeze.

This is not my favorite Inspector Gamache mystery, largely due to the disrespectful way that Penny describes Crie, the daughter of the victim (I think she uses the term "grotesque" either more than once), but in this re-read, I found myself completely engrossed in the drama of the overarching mystery and side stories. The interwoven and complex motives driving each of the police officers are so intriguing and set the stage well for a larger story looming over the series. Penny fails to pick up where she left off with some character storylines from the first novel (mainly Peter and Clara's), opting instead to give an in-dept introduction to a set of new characters, but those characters are so interesting that I don't even mind. Overall, an interesting story with a lot of twists and turns but also some faults.