A Fatal Grace: (Inspector Gamache series, 2)
Louise Penny, 2007
St. Martin's Press
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780312541163
Summary
CC de Poitiers managed to alienate everyone in the hamlet of Three Pines, right up to the moment she died.
When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache begins his investigation, it seems like an impossible murder: CC was electrocuted on a frozen lake, in front of the entire town, during the annual curling tournament. With compassion and courage, Gamache digs beneath the idyllic surface of village life to find long buried secrets, while his own enemies threaten to bring something even more chilling than the bitter winter winds to Three Pines. (From the publisher.)
See all our Reading Guides for Chief Inspector Gamache novels by Louise Penny.
Author Bio
• Birth—1958
• Where—Toronto, Canada
• Education—B.A, Ryerson University
• Awards—Agatha Award (4 times) "New Blood" Dagger Award;
Arthur Ellis Award; Barry Award, Anthony Award; Dilys Award.
• Currently—lives in Knowlton, Canada (outside of Montreal)
In her words
I live outside a small village south of Montreal, quite close to the American border. I'd like to tell you a little bit about myself. I was born in Toronto in 1958 and became a journalist and radio host with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, specializing in hard news and current affairs. My first job was in Toronto and then moved to Thunder Bay at the far tip of Lake Superior, in Ontario. It was a great place to learn the art and craft of radio and interviewing, and listening. That was the key. A good interviewer rarely speaks, she listens. Closely and carefully. I think the same is true of writers.
From Thunder Bay I moved to Winnipeg to produce documentaries and host the CBC afternoon show. It was a hugely creative time with amazingly creative people. But I decided I needed to host a morning show, and so accepted a job in Quebec City. The advantage of a morning show is that it has the largest audience, the disadvantage is having to rise at 4am.
But Quebec City offered other advantages that far outweighed the ungodly hour. It's staggeringly beautiful and almost totally French and I wanted to learn. Within weeks I'd called Quebecers "good pumpkins", ordered flaming mice in a restaurant, for dessert naturally, and asked a taxi driver to "take me to the war, please." He turned around and asked "Which war exactly, Madame?" Fortunately elegant and venerable Quebec City has a very tolerant and gentle nature and simply smiled at me.
From there the job took me to Montreal, where I ended my career on CBC Radio's noon programme.
In my mid-thirties the most remarkable thing happened. I fell in love with Michael, the head of hematology at the Montreal Children's Hospital. He'd go on to hold the first named chair in pediatric hematology in Canada, something I take full credit for, out of his hearing.
It's an amazing and blessed thing to find love later in life. It was my first marriage and his second. He'd lost his first wife to cancer a few years earlier and that had just about killed him. Sad and grieving we met and began a gentle and tentative courtship, both of us slightly fearful, but overcome with the rightness of it. And overcome with gratitude that this should happen to us and deeply grateful to the family and friends who supported us.
Fifteen years later we live in an old United Empire Loyalist brick home in the country, surrounded by maple woods and mountains and smelly dogs.
Since I was a child I've dreamed of writing and now I am. Beyond my wildest dreams (and I can dream pretty wild) the Chief Inspector Gamache books have found a world-wide audience, won awards and ended up on bestseller lists including the New York Times. Even more satisfying, I have found a group of friends in the writing community. Other authors, booksellers, readers—who have become important parts of our lives. I thought writing might provide me with an income—I had no idea the real riches were more precious but less substantial. Friendships.
There are times when I'm in tears writing. Not because I'm so moved by my own writing, but out of gratitude that I get to do this. In my life as a journalist I covered deaths and accidents and horrible events, as well as the quieter disasters of despair and poverty. Now, every morning I go to my office, put the coffee on, fire up the computer and visit my imaginary friends, Gamache and Beauvoir and Clara and Peter. What a privilege it is to write. I hope you enjoy reading the books as much as I enjoy writing them.
Chief Inspector Gamache was inspired by a number of people, and one main inspiration was this man holding a copy of En plein coeur. Jean Gamache, a tailor in Granby. He looks slightly as I picture Gamache, but mostly it was his courtesy and dignity and kind eyes that really caught my imagination. What a pleasure to be able to give him a copy of En plein coeur! (From the author's website with permission.)
Book Reviews
Louise Penny applies her magic...giving the village mystery an elegance and depth.
Marilyn Stasio - New York Times
[Penny] continues to deepen and modernize the traditional village mystery.
People
When sadistic socialite CC de Poitiers is fatally electrocuted at a Christmas curling competition in the tiny Quebecois village of Three Pines, only the arcane method of the murder is a surprise in Penny's artful but overwritten sophomore effort (after her highly praised 2006 debut, Still Life)....Though Penny gorgeously evokes the smalltown Christmas mood, the novel is oddly steeped in holiday atmosphere for a May release, and the plot's dependence on lengthy backstory slows the momentum.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Penny is a careful writer, taking time to establish character and scene, playing around with a large cast, distracting us so we won't see the final twists coming until they're upon us. This is a fine mystery in the classic Agatha Christie style, and it is sure to leave mainstream fans wanting more. —David Pitt
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. In the golden age of classic murder mysteries, the Detection Club, whose founders included Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie, drew up a list of rules for crime fiction that included the following: “No clue that is important to the solution of the puzzle may be concealed from the reader.” What are the clues to the murders in A Fatal Grace, and how does Louise Penny hide them in plain sight?
2. Consider the lines (from “A Sad Child,” by Margaret Atwood”): “Well, all children are sad/but some get over it.” A number of the people in the novel have had damaging childhoods. What helps or hinders them in moving beyond those childhoods?
3. Discuss the different meanings in the book of “Be Calm” (and B KLM).
4. Beauvoir regards Gamache as having saved him. Is Gamache trying to do the same for Nichol, and what do you think his chances are for success? What do you think it takes to get on what Beauvoir calls Gamache’s legendary, albeit well hidden, “bad side”?
5. Why does Gamache laugh with joy when Ruth Zardo says that CC de Poitiers “wasn’t very good, but she wasn’t so bad either. I mean really...who isn’t cruel and selfish?” Do you think Gamache agrees with this idea? Do you agree?
6. Three Pines is described as enchanted and magical, a fairy-tale world—but it’s also a world where Dr. Frankenstein creates a monster. How do you view the village and the people who live there?
7. Clara says, “At two in the afternoon my art is brilliant, at two in the morning it’s crap.” Peter doesn’t understand her art, but Gamache calls it marvelous. What do you think this says about her art and about her marriage? Why does Gamache tell Clara that she has “an instinct for crime”?
8. What impression do you get of Reine-Marie from her relatively brief appearances in the story? What do you think of her marriage to Gamache?
9. Both Clara and Gamache believe they see God in the course of this story. How do you view their experiences (and why lemon meringue pie)?
(Questions issued by publisher.)