Review: The Cruellest Month (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #3)
Gaby Meares
This is the third instalment of the Three Pines series by Louise Penny. This series just gets better and better as Penny settles into her characters and their setting.
Another unusual death brings C.I. Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec and his team back to the idyllic village of Three Pines. Could the victim really have been scared to death while attending a seance? As Gamache and his team interview the witnesses and suspects, the joy de vivre of the community is over-shadowed by the looming presence of the old Hadley house on the hill, drawing inspiration, I think, from the Bates house in Psycho!
While Gamache leads his team in their investigation, there are enemies in the Police force who will stop at nothing to destroy him. He suspects that a member of his team is a traitor, feeding information back to his enemies in the Surete. But who can it be?
My book club’s theme this month was ‘Food in Crime novels’. The Three Pines books simply ooze food: I counted over ten detailed descriptions of the the food and beverages enjoyed by the characters in this instalment! My favourite was on page 201:
Gamache’s coq au vin filled the table with a rich, earthy aroma and an unexpected hint of maple. Delicate young beans and glazed baby carrots sat in their own white serving dish. A massive charbroiled steak smothered in panfried onions was placed in front of Beauvoir. A mound of frites sat in his serving dish. Beauvoir could have died happily right there and then, but he’d have missed the creme brûlée for dessert.
I have fallen a little in love with Armand Gamache, who believes that kindness is a strength, and that the answers to the mystery ‘lay in flesh and blood. And so often not even in things corporeal, but in something that couldn’t be held and contained and touched. The answers to his questions lay in the murky past and in the emotions hidden there’.