No one seems to have sympathy and is happy to see her gone but Gamache and his team are dispatched nonetheless to find the murderer. And why would Gamache have suspected the Three Graces murdering CC in revenge for Christmas Eve humiliation of Crie without wondering how they could have come up with the plan and gotten everything in place in less than 24 hours over Christmas?

In this volume I learned more about the personalities of Gamache and his team, about their past and their fears. This is a fine mystery in the classic Agatha Christie style, and it is sure to leave mainstream fans wanting more. And as eager as Saul seems to be to start a new, better life in Three Pines, he still has one undeveloped roll of film that he hastily throws in the fireplace when Gamache and his team visit him at the chalet he has rented. No goddamned enlightenment,' she'd said to Saul in her Montreal office the day a batch of rejection letters arrived, ripping them into pieces and dropping them on the floor for the hired help to clean up.As for Nichol being somewhat akin to the Hadley House, as you wrote in your post, I’m not quite sure what you mean. They talk about moments from their past when something inexplicable caused them to behave in a certain way. For example, when the whole village finds out what a beautiful voice CC’s daughter has, she proceeds to completely annihilate her in front of everyone. Within minutes Gamache and his second-in-command, Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir, are on their way to Three Pines, to investigate the very odd death of CC de Poitiers.

I especially liked chief inspector Armand Gamache and his wife Reine-Marie and I loved the painter, Carol, her fragility and her luminous works; the enigmatic figure, Agent Nichol and the bag lady, Elle, and I could hear with Emilie's ears Tchaikovsky's violin concerto in D. I was surprised and delighted to find myself back in the village of Three Pines for the second Gamache mystery.She has won numerous awards, including a CWA Dagger and the Agatha Award (eight times), and was a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. De boeken staan op zichzelf, maar in volgorde gelezen ontplooien de karakters zich door de tijd heen en mis je ook toespelingen naar voorgaande boeken niet. While not known personally to Gamache or his wife, her presence in Montreal’s downtown core could not be missed.

While the deceased CC de Poitiers sounds like a real nasty person but I’m interested in seeing her murderer brought to justice nonetheless. I don't mean that to sound as dismissive as it probably does, and again, I understand that there are large numbers of readers who would love to live in Three Pines, but I'd probably go stark raving mad in less than a week.a curling lesson that convinces even Beauvoir, who has always scoffed at curling as a sport, that it’s a lot harder than it looks. In fact in one way or another, CC has deeply upset many of the inhabitants of the small Canadian village of Three Pines, so when she is murdered during the Boxing Day curling match, no one seems particularly sorry and several people appear to have a very good motive for wishing to see the back of her. The reader learns a sliver more about his family life, with a loving wife and an extended family who cannot comprehend his need to work so much.