A Fatal Grace ©2006 is the second murder mystery novel written by New York Times best selling author Louise Penny. It is also the second of her books that I have read. She has written fifteen novels with a sixteenth scheduled to be release in a couple days on September 1st. Yes, she is prolific. Based on my small sampling of two, she also seems consistent. Her chief inspector Armand Garmache is a truly likable character and, in my opinion, is the key reason readers become Louise Penny fans. He typically mentors new detectives to teach them the skills needed to effectively observe clues at the crime scene, interview suspects or witnesses, postulate motives, and question assumptions.
The character who is murdered in A Fatal Grace is nasty, cruel, vain, and generally unlikeable. No one grieves her death. The way she was killed is bizarre, via electrocution out on a sub-zero frozen lake. But the meticulous explanation of how such a feat could be accomplished – needing liquid, physical contact, and a source of electrical power – was fascinating and scientifically sound. It was not until the final pages that the murderer was revealed. I was unsuccessful in deciphering the culprit, so that final reveal part of the book entertained me. Sometimes, being duped in a fair competition where all the information is there and you just did not piece it together quite right is surprisingly amusing.
I also enjoy being immersed in the plot with the familiar friendly quirky characters from the first novel. The setting was once again the quaint village of Three Pines in Quebec and the snowy setting makes me imagine the story in unfolding inside a snow globe (image courtesy of 3d animations from Turbosquid.
True, I can not help but wonder how such an idyllic village could engender so many murders (fifteen of them, if all Penny's future novels take place in Three Pines). But then again, the tiny New England town of Cabot Cove in the TV series Murder She Wrote starring Angela Landsbury had a similar affliction.
Murder, She Wrote is an American crime drama television series starring Angela Lansbury as mystery writer and amateur detective Jessica Fletcher The series aired for 12 seasons with 264 episodes from 1984 to 1996 on the CBS network. It was followed by four TV films. Among the most successful and longest-running television shows in history, it averaged more than 30 million viewers per week in its prime (sometimes hitting above 40 million viewers), and was a staple of the CBS Sunday night lineup for a decade. In syndication, the series is still highly successful throughout the world.
For a good sample of the author's style, the entire first chapter of Fatal Grace is on Louise Penny's website as an excerpt. The book has the dual title of Dead Cold for the UK and Canada, hence the cryptic "dc" in the link. I think Dead Cold is a better title. I may have missed the explanatory reference in the text but I did not ever figure out the reason for the US title Fatal Grace. I surmise it could be an allusion to the term "coup de grâce", a French phrase that can be defined as "an action or event that serves as the culmination of a bad or deteriorating situation". The murder victim truly was an awful individual. I'd written a rather lengthy review of Louise Penny's first novel, Still Life, in my post dated 2/28/20 where I gave it 4 stars. I give Fatal Grace 3 stars which in my rating system stands for Better than average; not a waste of time. Why fewer stars then the first novel? I am not sure. Perhaps it has something to do with "why bother to find out who killed such a foul person since they deserved it". Why waste any more time on such an abominable human being?
Fewer stars do not deter me from reading this author's third and fourth novels. I put my name on the wait list at my local library and will be picking them up next week. They are not extremely riveting, but are certainly absorbing filler reads while deciding what more demanding texts to read next.
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