The Cruelest Month

I enjoyed this book 3 in Louise Penny's Canadian series centered around the small village of Three Pines and following Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec as he solves murders with his loyal team of officers. Ms. Penny's prose is beautiful and thoughtful and her cast of charming characters makes me wish I could live in Three Pines. In this title, Gamache must find a killer who used Ephedrine to kill a universally loved woman at a seance in a haunted mansion at Easter all while suffering from ghosts from his past which refuse to die. The new life/new hope imagery abound. There's also wonderful discussion of French Canadian life and what spiritualism and art mean to different people. The only drawbacks are that the police procedural portions lack some believability and the issue of body image could have been handled more sensitively.