Do you enjoy reading "who-done-its" whether they are courtroom thrillers or cozies? Want to discuss these books with other mystery lovers & discover new authors? Join the Mystery Reading Group. The group will be discussing "Fatal Grace" by Louise Penny. Funded by the Fountain Hills Friends of the Library.

 Welcome to winter in Three Pines, a picturesque village in Quebec, where the villagers are preparing for a traditional country Christmas, and someone is preparing for murder.
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.
When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, of the Sűreté du Quebec, is called to investigate, he quickly realizes he's dealing with someone quite extraordinary. CC de Poitiers was electrocuted in the middle of a frozen lake, in front of the entire village, as she watched the annual curling tournament. And yet no one saw anything. Who could have been insane enough to try such a macabre method of murder―or brilliant enough to succeed?
With his trademark compassion and courage, Gamache digs beneath the idyllic surface of village life to find the dangerous secrets long buried there. For a Quebec winter is not only staggeringly beautiful but deadly, and the people of Three Pines know better than to reveal too much of themselves. But other dangers are becoming clear to Gamache. As a bitter wind blows into the village, something even more chilling is coming for Gamache himself.

Discussion Questions:
1. In the golden age of classic murder mysteries, the Detection Club, whose founders included Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie, drew up a list of rules for crime fiction that included the following: “No clue that is important to the solution of the puzzle may be concealed from the reader.” What are the clues to the murders in A Fatal Grace, and how does Louise Penny hide them in plain sight?

2. Consider the lines (from “A Sad Child,” by Margaret Atwood”): “Well, all children are sad/but some get over it.” A number of the people in the novel have had damaging childhoods. What helps or hinders them in moving beyond those childhoods?

3. Discuss the different meanings in the book of “Be Calm” (and B KLM).

4. Beauvoir regards Gamache as having saved him. Is Gamache trying to do the same for Nichol, and what do you think his chances are for success? What do you think it takes to get on what Beauvoir calls Gamache’s legendary, albeit well hidden, “bad side”?

5. Why does Gamache laugh with joy when Ruth Zardo says that CC de Poitiers “wasn’t very good, but she wasn’t so bad either. I mean really...who isn’t cruel and selfish?” Do you think Gamache agrees with this idea? Do you agree?

6. Three Pines is described as enchanted and magical, a fairy-tale world—but it’s also a world where Dr. Frankenstein creates a monster. How do you view the village and the people who live there?

7. Clara says, “At two in the afternoon my art is brilliant, at two in the morning it’s crap.” Peter doesn’t understand her art, but Gamache calls it marvelous. What do you think this says about her art and about her marriage? Why does Gamache tell Clara that she has “an instinct for crime”?

8. What impression do you get of Reine-Marie from her relatively brief appearances in the story? What do you think of her marriage to Gamache?

9. Both Clara and Gamache believe they see God in the course of this story. How do you view their experiences (and why lemon meringue pie)?
(Questions issued by publisher.)