A Fatal Grace (Chief Inspector Gamache)

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I wanted to learn who killed her but unlike Chief Inspector Gamache could not summon up any great desire for her killer to be brought to justice. There are some red herrings that I fell for and while I did correctly guess a few pieces of this one, I didn’t have all of the pieces figured out. I was surprised and delighted to find myself back in the village of Three Pines for the second Gamache mystery. Here it’s the kind of weather when you find yourself stripped down to barely acceptable clothing and opening the fridge or freezer a little more often than necessary.

Something bigger than just the murder at hand seems to be brewing on the horizon - something with a sinister vibe that does not bode well for Gamache. A Fatal Grace is the second book I've read in the Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series and I'm ready for the next book. I guessed the murderer early on, but I get the feeling that whodunnit is less important to these books than the local color, the ambience, the sweet community. The reader learns a sliver more about his family life, with a loving wife and an extended family who cannot comprehend his need to work so much.

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. What do you think of Ruth’s idea that “most people, while claiming to hate authority, actually yearned for someone to take charge”?

In book two, there's another murder to solve for Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his crew as the repulsively cruel CC De Poitiers is no more.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. I have borrowed the one-liner from Dead Cold “she was only famous in the mirror” (paraphrased) and have used it more than once. With each breath his nostrils froze shut and the air was like an ice pack in his sinuses, shooting pain through his forehead and making his eyes tear and freeze. Not her quiet husband, not her spineless lover, not her pathetic daughter—and certainly none of the residents of Three Pines.