Rule Against Murder (Penny)

Book Reviews
With its small-town hominess, the Canadian village of Three Pines draws the reader into its quaint traditions. Who wouldn’t be charmed by the dramas of a community where Easter egg hunts and socials at the bed and breakfast are the most exciting events? Yet it is Penny’s fastidious, cultured, and smart Inspector Gamache who makes [The Cruelest Month] impossible to put down.
People


Penny’s plotting has been compared to Agatha Christie’s...in these wonderful books full of poetry and weather and a brooding manor house, and people who read and think and laugh and eat a lot of really excellent food. Move over, Mitford.
Charlotte Observer


(Starred review.) Murder interrupts Chief Insp. Armand Gamache and his wife's annual summer holiday at Quebec's isolated, lake-front Manoir Bellechasse in Agatha-winner Penny's intriguing, well-crafted fourth mystery (after 2008's The Cruelest Month). Irene Finney, the matriarch of a large eccentric family having a reunion at the Manoir, marks the event by having installed in the lodge's garden a statue of the long-dead father of her middle-aged children. When the massive statue falls and crushes one of the daughters, Gamache investigates and discovers no love lost among the surviving offspring. Also in the suspect pool are Bellechasse's owner, chef and maître d'. Despite the scorn the snobbish Finneys heap on Gamache's sleuthing efforts as well as his own infamous family tree, the inspector treats them all respectfully as he seeks to bring a killer to justice. Seamless, often lyrical prose artfully reveals the characters' flaws, dreams and blessings.
Publishers Weekly


The Quebecois village of Three Pines (first introduced in Still Life and Fatal Grace) is once again the scene of a perplexing murder, and Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team have caught the case. Madeleine Favreau, a cheerful and well-liked village resident, collapsed and died at an impromptu seance at a local house thought to be haunted. The cause of death is pronounced a high dose of ephedrine and fright. But Madeleine wasn't dieting, so who slipped her the ephedrine? Gamache is an engaging, modern-day Poirot who gently teases out information from his suspects while enjoying marvelous bistro meals and cozy walks on the village common. His team is an unlikely troupe of departmental misfits who blossom under his deft tutelage, turning up just the right clues. Penny is an award-winning writer whose cozies go beyond traditional boundaries, providing entertaining characters, a picturesque locale, and thought-provoking plots. Highly recommended. —Susan Clifford Braun
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Readers who haven’t discovered Louise Penny and her Armand Gamache series yet are in for a treat.... Suspects abound, naturally, and Gamache sorts through them with aplomb. One of the best traditional mystery series currently being published. —Judy Coon
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