Dead Cold/ A Fatal Grace (Inspector Gamache 2)

Author/Guide: Louise Penny

Why a Booktrail?

2000s: Ah Three Pines – deep in snowy Quebec. This book has two titles – Dead Cold and A Fatal Grace – both apt!

ISBN: 978-0751547436
Genre: Crime, Mystery

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What you need to know before your trail

It’s a lovely time to be in Three Pines – the sleepy village is blanketed in snow and looks lovely in the moonlight in the festive period. Well thats until a scream cuts the atmosphere in two and chills people far more than the snow ever could..

it turns out that at the local curling match, a spectator has been electrocuted to death. Strange however given the crowd and and you would assume the witnesses, there seems to be no clues and no accounts of what actually happened.

Inspector Gamache comes onto the scene and investigates the woman’w past, thinking that she myst have enemies or secrets to hide. She wasn’t exactly the most popular resident ever to have lived here..

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Travel Guide

Three Pines, if you haven’t been here before is the lovely town in the Eastern Canadian townships that is not on the map since it is fictional. Yet it gives a flavor of all the places in and around the area – the Canadian winters and the community feel of this part of the world.

The traditions and community feel of the village are highlighted here with the curling match and this has apparently led to the killer being able to get right at the heart of it – close enough to blend in and to kill one of their own.

Gamache’s involvement with three pines is as if Maigret and Poirot with a smattering of Columbo were to wander into a village environment and bring their own brand of investigation to the fore. Gamache has a way of saying nothing but you know he is absorbing everything around him and cutting to the chase. We like the way he has taken Agent Robert Lemieux in under his wing. He seems to have problems at work to which make him all the more human – some of his colleagues seem to have problems with him and these are gradually revealed and others hinted at.

The best thing about Three Pines is the characters who live there -quirky and friendly with a community feel. It’s when reading this novel that you might feel hungry – the descriptions of the food they prepare for the festive season is so good, it might be worth having some christmas food to hand as you will crave it when reading this!