“A Fatal Grace” by Louise Penny

This is Penny’s second mystery novel, still following Chief Inspector Gamache as he investigates murder within the small town of Three Pines in Canada. As far as sequels go, this is actually pretty good. Of course I have some criticism though.

First of all, this is a small town in Canada. Is anyone going to mention how rare it is for murders to happen in small towns? And related to that is how half of the characters from the first book return, so it is very unlikely that they are the murderer. Oh except for the three older ladies who didn’t make an appearance until this book. They can stay on the suspect list. I do understand that it is hard to create a second brilliant murder while staying within the confines of a previous book, but come on.

I also seriously do not get the Agent Nichol arc. I thought all of the characters were unreasonably hard on her for her actions in the first book. Sure she was rude, but I think it was unreasonable to have every recurring character talk shit about her. And I really don’t get what happened to her in this book, she was on the phone with someone and it implied that she was giving away police secrets but I have no idea. I think she was sent home again at the end. Can we just give her a break? She’s doing her best and I’m getting sick of her being used as a punching bag.

Having gotten that out of the way, the crime being investigated is really cool. There are multiple factors that all come together nicely by the end, but you have no idea until then. It involves the victim’s past and her family, with plenty of parallel lines throughout.

What really makes this work is the emphasis on the power of words. There are multiple puns with serious significance on the plot, and many characters make decisions based on names and words. Which is great because this is in book form. This story is entirely words! Think about the power of that, these are simply words on the page, but they conjure a whole story in our heads. There’s serious power in that. The story doesn’t go into the written word, but I think it speaks to the choice of the medium. Within the story it mainly deals with how we develop connotations to certain words, and how those can dominate our thoughts. We make so many choices on whims, and some of those are based on how we react to words. This novel highlights that really well.

A decent sophomore novel here for Chief Inspector Gamache. I wish I understood more of what was happening, but it’s got a really good story and maybe I’m just being dumb. Will try to find her next novel as well!