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(234 reviews)
Author: Visit Amazon's Louise Penny Page
ISBN : 0312573502
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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Chief Insp. Armand Gamache and his team investigate another bizarre crime in the tiny Québec village of Three Pines in Penny's expertly plotted third cozy (after 2007's
A Fatal Grace). As the townspeople gather in the abandoned and perhaps haunted Hadley house for a séance with a visiting psychic, Madeleine Favreau collapses, apparently dead of fright. No one has a harsh word to say about Madeleine, but Gamache knows there's more to the case than meets the eye. Complicating his inquiry are the repercussions of Gamache having accused his popular superior at the Sûreté du Québec of heinous crimes in a previous case. Fearing there might be a mole on his team, Gamache works not only to solve the murder but to clear his name. Arthur Ellis Award–winner Penny paints a vivid picture of the French-Canadian village, its inhabitants and a determined detective who will strike many Agatha Christie fans as a 21st-century version of Hercule Poirot.
(Mar.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
“Gamache is a prodigiously complicated and engaging hero, destined to become one of the classic detectives.”
---Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“The cozy mystery has a graceful practitioner in Louise Penny.”
---The New York Times Book Review
“Don’t look for the hamlet of Three Pines anywhere on a map . . . although Louise Penny has made the town and its residents so real . . . that you might just try to find it.”
---The Chicago Tribune
“[A Fatal Grace] is not the usual ‘cosy’ or even a traditional puzzle mystery. It’s a finely written, intelligent, and observant book.”
---The Houston Chronicle
“A remarkable new writer . . . Louise Penny arrives with flair, humanity, and intrigue in her debut novel, Still Life. . . . Elegant writing alone would not carry this remarkable book; Penny also creates a puzzle worthy of the masters. But more important, she studies issues of good and evil, of human nature, of human kindness, and human cruelty.”
---The Richmond Times-Dispatch
“This cerebral mystery . . . is a rare treat.”
---People on Still Life
See all Editorial Reviews
Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation Epub The Cruelest Month: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel
- Series: Chief Inspector Gamache Novels (Book 3)
- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Minotaur Books; Reprint edition (April 12, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0312573502
- ISBN-13: 978-0312573508
- Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Epub The Cruelest Month: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel
Book Club Review
The Cruelest Month
Louise Penny
Our book club's book for March was THE CRUELEST MONTH, by Louise Penny. We decided on this book because it intersected two themes we have been thinking about reading. The first one was wanting to read a "cozy." The second was wanting to reading something either written by a Canadian or set in Canada. (We were talking about how close Canada is, and yet how little we really know about it. We have also read other Canadian mysteries, and have enjoyed them.)
This is (it turns out) the third in a series set in the fictional Quebec town of Three Pines. A beloved local resident--a cancer survivor who fled life in the big city for something more simple--dies during a seance, which takes place in the town's "haunted house." The investigative team led by Armand Gamache is called in to figure out what has happened. Was it murder? Can you literally scare someone to death? In the meantime, Gamache--who has blown the whistle on some terrible goings-on in the department--is the target of a cruel vendetta that seeks to ruin him, his family, and his career.
In some ways Three Pines is a sort of Quebecois version of St. Mary Mead, complete with all the delightful businesses and local characters that one expects in a cozy. But Three Pines is an update of that typical village; the author works hard at making the cast overtly "diverse," including a much-beloved and accepted gay couple and a black woman who runs the local bookstore. The investigation does proceed very slowly, with a psychologically perceptive but somehow not very satisfying conclusion.
This was a book that, as a club, we felt we really wanted to like, but we were left feeling disappointed, underwhelmed even.
I realize that all the Louise Penny fans will beat me up for not loving this book. They should go back and see the rating I gave for the first book in the series -- which I loved. The second book was more flawed. This book was just not very good. It took me forever to wade through it -- I read it over the course of a couple of weeks, which is not a good sign for a mystery. If I had to summarize the problem, it's that the good things about the first book are now totally exaggerated, to the point where it's simply over the top.
One of the themes that the author loves is good vs. evil. To that end, her characters seem to be cardboard stereotypes of good and evil. Gamache is clearly a saintly man persecuted by evil people (supposed to remind you of someone who was crucified?). And the philosophizing! Oy vey, the author is no philosopher. She ends up sounding like a college freshman sitting up all night talking with friends. Worst of all, the philosophizing took the place of actually spending time on the mystery. The book would have been 100 pages shorter and much better if the author had edited out the mediocre philosophizing and Arnot stuff.
Although I'm supposed to love Gamache, I just didn't, because he was no more real that these coworkers who are bent on destroying him. Office politics is never that bad, certainly not that conspiratorial. It's impossible for me to believe that all these high level police officials sit around trying to figure out how to bring this man down out of revenge for what he did to someone now in jail -- or for any other reason.
This whole business about an "evil" house is also too ridiculous. As is the man who hears trees talking to him.
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