A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
-Print: COPYRIGHT ©: 2007; ISBN: 978-0-312-35256-1; PUBLISHER: St. Martin’s Press; PAGES: 320; UNABRIDGED; (Info from Wikipedia.com)
-Digital: ©: May, 15, 2007; PUBLISHER: St. Martin’s Minotaur Edition; PAGES: 418; Unabridged (Kindle Info from Amazon.com)
-*Audio: COPYRIGHT ©: 5 May 2014; PUBLISHER: Macmillan Audio; DURATION: 11 hours (approx.); Unabridged; (Info from Libby app version)
-Feature Film or tv: ©: December 2022; Amazon Prime Video; Two-part episode called “White-Out”. Stars Alfred Molina.

SERIES: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache Mystery, Book 2

MAIN CHARACTERS: (Not comprehensive)
Armand Gamache – Chief Inspector of the Surete du Quebec (Montreal), head of homicide
Reine-Marie Gamache – Armand’s spouse.
Henri – The Gamache’s dog
Jean Guy Beauvoir – 35 year old Inspector serving under Armand Gamache for the past 10 years.
Isabelle Lacoste – an agent under Gamache (seems to be the forensic specialist)
Lucy – Clara’s dog, formerly Jane’s dog
Yvette Nichol – Agent in training
Robert Lemieux – Duty officer with the Cowansville Surete, Gamache’s new trainee
Cecilia (CC) de Portiers – A woman whose recently published a spiritual advice book
Richard Lyon – The spouse of Cici
Crie (Crt) de Portiers – Ricard and Cici’s daughter
Beatrice (Bea / Mother) Mayer – A spiritual leader in the community and one of three close elderly friends.
Emilie (Em) Longpre – one of three close elderly friends.
Eleanor (Elle) Allaire – a friend of the three elderly women.
Kaye Thompson – one of three close elderly friends.
Peter Morrow – Local Villager, spouse of Clara
Clara Morrow – Local Villager, spouse of Peter
Ruth Zardo – Local Villager with a bad attitude
Yolande Fontaine – Local Villager, spouse of Andre Malenfant, niece of Jane Neal, Real Estate agent
Saul Petrov- A fifty-two-year-old photographer
Olivier Brule – Local Bistro owner, spouse of Gabri
Gabriel (Gabri) Dubeau – Local Villager, spouse of Olivier
Myrna Landers – Local bookshop owner
Michel Brebeuf – A Superintendent whom Gamache considers a best friend
Superintendent Francoeur – The official who sends Agent Nicol back to work under Gamache
Pierre Arnot – an officer of the force that fell from grace by killing people
Billy Williams – a local villager, Canadian Automobile Association’s mechanic
Dr. Sharon Harris – The coroner

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
SELECTED: After reading (listening to) Book 1, I was anxious to read the next.
ABOUT: The small quaint village in Quebec from Book 1 is back, and so are Inspectors Gamache and Beauvoir. There are a couple, or actually, maybe a few, to solve this time and a lot of great literature is quoted.
OVERALL IMPRESSION: I enjoy the characters, and the mysteries. Then, there is a new intrigue developing around Inspector Gamache, where a moral stance taken in his past seems to be threatening his future career.

AUTHOR:
Louise Penny
Excerpt from Wikipedia:
“Louise Penny (born July 1, 1958) {Oh, look! Same year *I* was born!} [1] CM OQ is a Canadian author of mystery novels set in the Canadian province of Quebec centred on the work of francophone Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec. Penny's first career was as a radio broadcaster for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). After she turned to writing, she won numerous awards for her work, including the Agatha Award for best mystery novel of the year five times, including four consecutive years (2007–2010), and the Anthony Award for best novel of the year five times, including four consecutive years (2010–2013). Her novels have been published in 23 languages.
Penny was born in Toronto, Canada,[2] on July 1, 1958.[1][3] Her mother was an avid reader of both fiction and non-fiction, with a particular liking for crime fiction,[4] and Louise grew up reading mystery writers such as Agatha Christie, Georges Simenon, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Michael Innes.[4]

Penny earned a Bachelor of Applied Arts (Radio and Television) from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Toronto Metropolitan University) in 1979.[5] After graduation, aged 21, she embarked on an 18-year career as a radio host and journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).[6]”

NARRATOR:
Ralph Cosham-
Excerpt from Wikipedia:
“Ralph Howard Cosham (25 February 1936 – 30 September 2014),[1] was a British-born American film, stage and voice actor and book narrator. Cosham also recorded under the name Geoffrey Howard.[2] He lived in Reston, Virginia. He was a member of the acting companies of the Washington Theatre Club, the Folger Shakespeare Library, Arena Stage and the Shakespeare Theater all in Washington, DC.[3] Cosham changed careers from British journalist to actor in the 1970s.[2] Several of his works were awarded "Audio Best of the Year" by Publishers Weekly.[2]

Ralph Cosham died of an illness on Tuesday, 30 September 2014 at his home in Reston, Virginia, at the age of 78.[4]

Career
In early 1964, Hamilton Company LTD contracted with United Press International to prepare a special souvenir magazine of The Beatles' first visit to America. UPI assigned English immigrant Cosham to write this. His interviews with concertgoers and reports were published as "The Beatles at Carnegie Hall," which remains easy to find today.

In voice acting he was featured in the video game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion[5] as the Breton males, including characters such as Jauffre, the Grandmaster of the Blades, and Vicente Valtieri; Dr. Guervich in Death Without Consent (2005); he played the voice part "townspeople 3" in Pirates of the Caribbean (2003).[citation needed]

In acting he was a driver in Shadow Conspiracy (1997); Supreme Court Justice Jensen in The Pelican Brief (1993), Judge Assel Steward in Suspect (1987); a Marine Lieutenant in Starman (1984); and played the part of Braddock's Captain in the TV mini-series George Washington (1984).[6]

As a book narrator, Cosham (or as Howard) narrated over 100 books since 1992.[3][2] Some titles include The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, The Castle by Franz Kafka, The Secret Agent (1996), Heart of Darkness (2002), Frankenstein (2002), Around the World in Eighty Days (2003), Alice in Wonderland (2004), Watership Down (2010), Dead Man's Chest (2001 novel by Roger Johnson, narrated in 2006), King Leopold's Ghost, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, numerous works of C.S. Lewis including The Space Trilogy, Miracles, Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain and The Screwtape Letters, as well as a collection of American short stories titled The American Experience: A Collection of Great American Stories (2004). Cosham was the first narrator for a series of mysteries written by Louise Penny; he won AudioFile Earphones and Library Journal awards for best audiobook and the Mystery Audie Award in 2013 for The Beautiful Mystery. Cosham recorded the first ten books of the series.[3]

After Cosham's death, Robert Bathurst was chosen to narrate future books.[7]”

GENRE:
Fiction; Canadian; Mystery

TIME FRAME:
N/A (But I’d say contemporary - 2007)

LOCATION(S):
Three Pines, Quebec (Canada)

SUBJECTS:
Art, LGBTQ; Psychology; Murder; Art; Authors; Friendship; Dysfunctional families

DEDICATION:
“For my brother Doug and his family, Mary, Brian, Roslyn, and Charles, who showed me what courage really is. Namaste.”

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From Chapter “One”
“Had CC de Poitiers known she was going to be murdered she might have bought her husband, Richard, a Christmas gift. She might even have gone to her daughter’s end of term pageant at Miss Edward’s School for Girls, or ‘girths’ as CC liked to tease her expansive daughter. Had CC de Poitiers known the end was near she might have been at work instead of in the cheapest room the Ritz in Montreal had to offer. But the only end she knew was near belonged to a man named Saul.
‘So, what do you think? Do you like it?’ She balanced her book on her pallid stomach.
Saul looked at it, not for the first time. She’d dragged it out of her huge purse every five minutes for the past few days. In business meetings, dinners, taxi rides through the snowy streets of Montreal, CC’d suddenly bend down and emerge triumphant, holding her creation as though another virgin birth.
‘I like the picture,’ he said, knowing the insult. He’d taken the picture. He knew she was asking, pleading, for more and he knew he no longer cared to give it. And he wondered how much longer he could be around CC de Poitiers before he became her. Not physically, of course. At forty-eight she was a few years younger than him. She was slim and ropy and toned, her teeth impossibly white and her hair impossibly blonde Touching her was like caressing a veneer of ice. There was a beauty to it, and a frailty he found attractive. But there was also danger. If she ever broke, if she shattered, she’d tear him to pieces.
But her exterior wasn’t the issue. Watching her caress her book with more tenderness than she’d ever shown when caressing him, he wondered whether her ice water insides had somehow seeped into him, perhaps during sex, and were slowly freezing him. Already he couldn’t feel his core.
At fifty-two Saul Petrov was just beginning to notice his friends weren’t quite as brilliant, not quite as clever, not quite as slim as they once were. In fact, most had begun to bore him. And he’d noticed a telltale yawn or two from them as well. They were growing thick and bald and dull, and he suspected he was too. It wasn’t so bad that women rarely looked at him any more or that he’d begun to consider trading his downhill skis for cross country, or that his GP had scheduled his first prostate test. He could accept all that. What woke Saul Petrov at two in the morning, and whispered in his ears in the voice that had warned him as a child that lions lived under his bed, was the certainty that people now found him boring. He’d take deep dark breaths of the night air, trying to reassure himself that the stifled yawn of his dinner companion was because of the wine or the magret de canard or the warmth in the Montreal restaurant, wrapped as they were in their sensible winter sweaters.
But still the night voice growled and warned of dangers ahead. Of impending disaster. Of telling tales too long, of an attention span too short, of seeing the whites of too many eyes. Of glances, fast and discreet, at watches. When can they reasonably leave him? Of eyes scanning the room, desperate for more stimulating company.
And so he’d allowed himself to be seduced by CC. Seduced and devoured so that the lion under the bed had become the lion in the bed. He’d begun to suspect this self-absorbed woman had finally finished absorbing herself, her husband and even that disaster of a daughter and was now busy absorbing him.
He’d already become cruel in her company. And he’d begun despising himself. But not quite as much as he despised her.
‘It’s a brilliant book,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘I mean, really. Who wouldn’t want this?’ She waved it in his face. ‘People’ll eat it up. There’re so many troubled people out there.’ She turned now and actually looked out their hotel room window at the building opposite, as though surveying her ‘people’. ‘I did this for them.’ Now she turned back to him, her eyes wide and sincere.
Does she believe it? he wondered.
He’d read the book, of course. Be Calm she’d called it, after the company she’d founded a few years ago, which was a laugh given the bundle of nerves she actually was. The anxious, nervous hands, constantly smoothing and straightening. The snippy responses, the impatience that spilled over into anger.
Calm was not a word anyone would apply to CC de Poitiers, despite her placid, frozen exterior.
She’d shopped the book around to all the publishers, beginning with the top publishing houses in New York and ending with Publications Réjean et Maison des cartes in St Polycarpe, a one-vache village along the highway between Montreal and Toronto.”

RATING:.
5

STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
12/18/2023 – 12/19/2023 ( )

Mystery

2nd in series. Really good. KIRKUS REVIEWA frozen Quebec lake, a curling competition and two recently published books form a prelude to murder.Before she was electrocuted on a frozen pond in front of a crowd who saw nothing because they were all intent on the annual Christmas curling contest, CC de Poitiers was a recent arrival in Three Pines who was heartily disliked by everyone, including her cowed husband and overweight, constantly belittled daughter. By contrast, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache finds the village enchanting and is familiar with many of the off-the-beaten-track artistic types. In addition to his usual assistants, Gamache is assigned local S?ret? Agent Robert Lemieux, who?s pleased to sit at the feet of his idol, and lumbered with Agent Yvette Nichol, who almost ruined his last investigation (Still Life, 2006). He?s also working the death of a bag lady in Montreal, a case with surprising ties to Three Pines. As his minions collect evidence, Gamache ponders the implications of a murder that involves philosophical conflicts, psychologically damaged people and secrets from the past. His own career is jeopardized by an old case involving crooked police officers. Dangerous possibilities hover in the background as he tries to plumb the mind of the murderer.Remarkably, Penny manages to top her outstanding debut. Gamache is a prodigiously complicated and engaging hero, destined to become one of the classic detectives.

(2007) Gamache is drawn back to Three Pines to investigate the bizarre death by electrocution of CC de Poitiers who was not very well liked in the town. Turns out that her daughter finally snapped after many years of abuse by the mother. KIRKUS REVIEWA frozen Quebec lake, a curling competition and two recently published books form a prelude to murder.Before she was electrocuted on a frozen pond in front of a crowd who saw nothing because they were all intent on the annual Christmas curling contest, CC de Poitiers was a recent arrival in Three Pines who was heartily disliked by everyone, including her cowed husband and overweight, constantly belittled daughter. By contrast, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache finds the village enchanting and is familiar with many of the off-the-beaten-track artistic types. In addition to his usual assistants, Gamache is assigned local S?ret? Agent Robert Lemieux, who's pleased to sit at the feet of his idol, and lumbered with Agent Yvette Nichol, who almost ruined his last investigation (Still Life, 2006). He's also working the death of a bag lady in Montreal, a case with surprising ties to Three Pines. As his minions collect evidence, Gamache ponders the implications of a murder that involves philosophical conflicts, psychologically damaged people and secrets from the past. His own career is jeopardized by an old case involving crooked police officers. Dangerous possibilities hover in the background as he tries to plumb the mind of the murderer.Remarkably, Penny manages to top her outstanding debut. Gamache is a prodigiously complicated and engaging hero, destined to become one of the classic detectives.Pub Date: May 19th, 2007ISBN: 0-312-35256-5Page count: 320ppPublisher: MinotaurReview Posted Online: May 20th, 2010Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1st, 2007

Enjoyed it immensely. ( )