A Fatal Grace (Chief Inspector Gamache)

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It’s a storyline that’s not present in the novels, and serves as the entry point into a broader conversation in Canada right now, where there is a long history of police ignoring or closing the book on missing Indigenous women. As the rest of the season unravels, it’s just one touchstone into the Indigenous communities, as the adaptation makes other changes to further those conversations. In this case, a particularly unpleasant woman is murdered in a very complicated and public way while attending a curling match. Sitting at the front of the crowd, the victim stands up, touches the chair in front of her and is promptly electrocuted.

The story takes a number of twist and turns and, again, I can understand its appeal. But I did have a lot of trouble buying into the way the Three Pines murder occurred; it just seemed completely implausible to me and unnecessarily complicated. As one of the characters asked, why go to all that trouble? Why not simply shoot her or something? No one liked CC de Poitiers. Not her quiet husband, not her spineless lover, not her pathetic daughter—and certainly none of the residents of Three Pines. CC de Poitiers managed to alienate everyone, right up until the moment of her death.I’ve been to Montreal once in March, so Louise Penny’s descriptions of winter in Quebec seem spot-on, several scenes made me downright chilly! The town of Three Pines sounds picture perfect, but there are crimes to be solved by Gamache. Isn’t this yet another return to the flawed Golden Age Theory? The novel is great, but this idea bugs me. Only fools underestimated (Gamache), but Brault knew the service was full of fools. Fools with power, fools with guns. The Arnot case had proved that beyond a doubt. And had almost destroyed the large, thoughtful man in front of him." pg 57, ebook

I started working with Louise in October 2006, after the editor who had bought her first three books left Minotaur for another company. At the time, only Still Life had been published. A Fatal Grace was in bound galleys, and The Cruelest Month was a completed manuscript in search of a title. A traditional and highly intelligent mystery....sure to create great reader demand for more stories featuring civilized and articulate Chief Inspector Gamache.... Highly recommended. ” — Library Journal (starred review) I understand that completely. It went through a deep, dark period after my late partner died of cancer, but I made changes in my life that led me to a much happier existence than that which I lived before I met Jeff. The works appeared simple but were in reality very complex. Images and colors were layered one on top of the other. Hours and hours, days and days must have been spent on each one to get the desired effect.

The fictional town is inspired by Penny’s hometown of Knowlton, Que., a tourist hotspot where locals now offer tours for hundreds of dollars a day. To capture the unique cinematography, the Prime Video Canada adaption filmed in Montreal and in the Quebec Eastern Townships in a village called Saint-Armand, which is about 45 minutes from Knowlton.