The Cruelest Month (Armand Gamache Series #3) » (Reprint)

LOUISE PENNY’s first Armand Gamache mystery, Still Life, won the New Blood Dagger, Arthur Ellis, Barry, Anthony, and Dilys awards; her second, A Fatal Grace, won the 2007 Agatha Award for Best Novel; and her third, The Cruelest Month, was #1 on the hardcover IMBA bestseller list in March 2008, and her fourth, A Rule Against Murder, was a New York Times bestseller. She lives in a small village south of Montreal.

It’s spring in the tiny, forgotten village of Three Pines.

But not everything is meant to return to life...

When a group of villagers decide to celebrate Easter with a séance at the Old Hadley House, they are hoping to rid the town of its evil—until one of their party dies of fright. Was this a natural death? Or was the victim somehow helped along?

THE CRUELEST MONTH

Enter Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. He knows evil when he sees it. But this time, he’s investigating a case that will force him to face his very own ghosts...as well as those residing in this seemingly idyllic town. Are the residents of Three Pines hiding something great and sinister about their past? Or is April about to deliver on its fateful threat?

“If you don’t give your heart to Gamache, you may have no heart to give.”—Kirkus Review (starred review)

“Penny takes exquisite care to create, flesh out, and nurture.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“The cozy mystery has a graceful practitioner…in Louise Penny.”—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Chief Insp. Armand Gamache and his team investigate another bizarre crime in the tiny Québec village of Three Pines in Penny's expertly plotted third cozy (after 2007's A Fatal Grace). As the townspeople gather in the abandoned and perhaps haunted Hadley house for a séance with a visiting psychic, Madeleine Favreau collapses, apparently dead of fright. No one has a harsh word to say about Madeleine, but Gamache knows there's more to the case than meets the eye. Complicating his inquiry are the repercussions of Gamache having accused his popular superior at the Sûreté du Québec of heinous crimes in a previous case. Fearing there might be a mole on his team, Gamache works not only to solve the murder but to clear his name. Arthur Ellis Award-winner Penny paints a vivid picture of the French-Canadian village, its inhabitants and a determined detective who will strike many Agatha Christie fans as a 21st-century version of Hercule Poirot. (Mar.)