A Fatal Grace
Louise Penny
St. Martin's, May 2007, $23.95, ISBN: 0312352565
reviewed by Harriet Klausner

In Three Pines, Quebec socialite CC de Poitiers runs a successful personal guidance business based on her book Be Calm until she participates in the local Yuletide curling competition only to be electrocuted. Montreal Chief Inspector Armand Gamache arrives at the tiny village to lead the official inquiry into what appears to be a tragic accident.

Armand interviews the victim’s submissive spouse and overweight daughter, a lover, a rival self-help guru, curling competitors and officials, and some townsfolk. All seem to have alibis, but share in common a universal loathing of CC. In fact each person questioned paints a picture of an abusive ugly person and that the culprit should be honored not arrested. Thus everyone he has talked to especially the family members has a motive for killing the apparently odious CC de Poitiers; most had an opportunity though they offer alibis.

When Gamache is front and center investigating the death, A FATAL GRACE is a superb police procedural; when the plot refers to the past especially that of the odious deceased it loses momentum. Still the story line contains a fine whodunit as it appears that much of Quebec wanted the nasty CC dead and several had the opportunity to fix her equipment and that make for a bunch of suspects for the police and readers to sift through and find out who, of all those who wanted her dead actually, acted on the desire.