Customer Reviews

A Rule Against Murder: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (Armand Gamache Mysteries)

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Armand Gamache and his wife arrive at Manoir Bellechasse, for their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, expecting a quiet, romantic vacation.

They are the ideal guests, not complaining and happy with the room they are given. They are greeted by their old friend, innkeeper Clementine Dubois, at the reception desk.

Clementine tells them that the Finneys have taken the other five rooms for a reunion, all coming in their expensive cars and asking for free upgrades.

The highlight of the Finney's vacation is the unveiling of the statue of Mrs. Finney's former husband, Charles Morrow.

We learn some of the family antagonisms which come to a point when the statue of Morrow is overturned and beneath the statue is the body of one of the Finneys.

As the family is interviewed, we learn more of the petty jealousies and dislikes that members of the family had toward each other.

The author has a way of describing the action as if the reader was a guest at the inn, observing the character's actions and listening to their complaints.

A well done mystery with excellent characters and a well described setting. I kept trying to guess who the killer might be, only to be surprised.

First Sentence: More than a century ago the Robber Barons discovered Lac Massawippi.

Inspector Armund Gamache and his wife Reine-Marie have come to Manoir Bellechasse where they've come for more than 30 years to celebrate their wedding anniversary. They find the rest of the rooms in the small hotel reserved by members of the Finney family. A surprise comes when the Gamache's discover two members of the Finney family are their friends Peter and Clara from Three Pines.

It becomes a busman's holiday when one of the daughters is found dead under a newly installed memorial statue of her father.

There is a much deeper layer to Ms. Penny's books than the normal mystery--one that makes you think and then question those thoughts; to look at things in a new way and see them differently. Ms. Penny employs incredible imagery as well as poetry interspersed through the story, and wonderful humor.

Characters are another great strength of Ms. Perry. Gamache is a man of many layers. We learn much more of his personal history. I love his relationship to his wife and his investigative team. The members of his team each have their own strengths and perspectives with the cumulative result of solving their cases. The Finney family members and hotel employees are just as well drawn. Each character is significant to the story.

Ms. Penny also includes a bit of history of Quebec with an interesting perspective on the success of the Quebecois in the 1960 and that many of the young people left Quebec as they didn't speak French and found it difficult to get work. "They lost their children for the sake of a language." None of this overshadows the quality of the mystery itself.

It is tightly plotted, intricate and clever with some excellent suspense. The clues are all there to be found, but I didn't put it together until it was presented. Ms. Penny is highly skilled in bringing together all these elements into one enormously enjoyable and satisfying read.

It is summertime in Louise Penny's "A Rule Against Murder." Armand Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, are celebrating their wedding anniversary as they do every year, in the luxurious Manoir Bellechasse, "one of the finest auberges in Quebec." Its isolated location, beautiful lakeside view, and well-tended gardens make the Manoir the perfect retreat for weary guests. Visitors to the lodge know that they will be pampered by solicitous employees who anticipate their every need, and that they will enjoy delicious meals expertly prepared by a master chef. What the Gamaches do not know is that they will be thrown together with a horribly dysfunctional family consisting of seven people: an arrogant matriarch, Irene Finney, her second husband, Bert, Irene's four children, Thomas, Julia, Peter, and Marianna, and Marianna's ten-year-old child, Bean. The Gamaches are disconcerted by the contemptuous manner in which the Finneys and Morrows treat one another.

When one of them is found killed, Armand reveals that he is Chief Inspector Gamache, the head of homicide for the Sūreté du Québec. He senses that the palpable tension among the Morrows and Finneys stems from long-held secrets and grudges. However, at first, Gamache and his subordinates, Inspector Jean Guy Beauvior and Agent Isabelle Lacoste, have no idea who committed the murder and why. The chief inspector is a civilized and caring person with a keen understanding of how the criminal mind works. He discerns subtle clues and feelings that less talented investigators often overlook. This time, unfortunately, even Gamache is flabbergasted by a strange crime with very little evidence and a group of suspects, all of whom had motive, means, and opportunity to commit murder. He desperately searches for answers before another life is lost.

"A Rule Against Murder" is at its best when Gamache, a natural leader with a sterling reputation, takes center stage. He and his colleagues interview the staff and guests at the Manoir, trying to find out who might have benefited from the victim's demise. We gradually get a picture of a family divided, each nursing petty resentments and slights that should have been laid to rest long ago. Penny skillfully contrasts this bickering bunch with Armand and Reine-Marie, soul mates who have been blissfully married for over thirty years.

This is a conventional story with a few strange twists. All of the principal characters are under one roof, so at least the police have a focus for their inquiries. Finding the perpetrator, however, will require both imagination and luck. Unfortunately, the reader is forced to spend too much time with a bunch of mean-spirited, selfish, and spiteful individuals who behave like spoiled brats. Peter candidly admits to his friend, Armand, whom he knows well from their hometown, Three Pines, "We're a greedy family, Gamache. Greedy, and even cruel." In addition, the improbable and melodramatic conclusion is not particularly suspenseful or compelling. "A Rule Against Murder" is a talky and languidly paced mystery that explores the ways in which men and women lash out at those who have hurt them.

I have read with pleasure this latest book featuring Armand Gamache and his team. I think the series improves with each novel because of the added details in the lives of the established characters. It has been good to have a change of venue but I do hope some more will be set in Three Pines because of the characters and the atmosphere of that isolated town. I highly recommend this book but would suggest that readers start with the first title in the series "A Still Life" and work their way to this book.

I'm a big fan of this series, ordering new releases as soon as they're announced. When this one came in, I stopped reading another book so I could get to it right away.

Penny created an outstanding double mystery here. The first, who did it, was not clear to me until near the end. There were certainly a wide range of candidates, though. When the mystery was summed up in the final pages, it's clear that there were plenty of good clues scattered here and there.

Then, of course, there was the second mystery. How was this murder accomplished? The method of death seems impossible for one, or even a few people to arrange. At times, it seemed as if the murderer employed magic. However, like any good magic trick, the impossible becomes simple once the secret is known. This secret, too, is explained, and its knowledge is woven into the fabric of the story.

If there were separate scores for plotting and for character development, I'd give both categories 5+. As it is, we'll have to just settle for a single 5-star rating.

Congratulations to Ms. Penny on an outstanding work.

Enjoyable cozy with a few procedural elements. Quebec itself, as a the setting for the series, is a main attraction.

I will be reading all the future books, but if I could put in requests to the author, they would be:

- use a brush instead of a hammer in your philosophy. Let us catch it with a sideways glance.

- resist the siren call of your Harriet Vane, Clara. It's not good manners to walk around in your own stories...readers are subliminally aware that you are watching. I don't think I'm the only one who dislikes Clara because she's constantly shoved in my face as a sympathetic person. She comes off as the girl your mother always pointed out as a model child.

- your most interesting characters are ambivalent. Olivier with his greed, Beauvoir with his mixed up attitude toward women. Let more flaws into your characters. Let life alter them. Give them less assurance about who they are and what they are doing.

- If Gamache is to be a saint, OK...it's one thing for a lover to see the beloved in a golden haze, but quite another for a writer to see the protagonist that way. Something, maybe the source of Gamache, is interfering with your work.

This book almost makes it. A famous police detective (of the presently obligatory super sensitive, poetry spouting sort) and his wife are guests at a Quebec ofdge along with a dysfunctional family of rich or would be rich self entitled, somewhat weird Anglos. Along the way one of the family is murdered in a bizarre fashion - a memorial statue of her father falls on her and crushes her. The mystery revolves around who did it and how it was done. As this is worked out, the people involved become characatures and things become increasingly improbable. A couple of attempts to add excitement seem contrived. At the end the guilty party seems picked at random from the cast. The solution to how it was done seems unlikely and really fails to satisfactorily explain what happened. How the victim got his victim to be at the right place at the right time defies explanation.

In this fourth book of the Inspector Gamache series, Canadian author Louise Penny varies her location and characters. Readers of this series have gotten used to the Quebec village of Three Pines, dogged by a string of murders. What a surprise to find Chief Inspector Armand Gamache embroiled in a murder investigation at a lakeside manoir while enjoying an anniversary holiday with his wife.

The other big difference in A Rule Against Murder: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel is that Chief Inspector Gamache seems to have put the grievous political wranglings of his department behind him, and his team is stripped back to the core (Jean-Paul Beauvoir and Isabel Lacoste) with no sign of a traitorous spy in their midst. I found this change particularly welcome since the previous book was too weighted down with departmental angst for my taste.

As usual, it's holiday time as the book gets under way: July 1, Canada Day, is upon them. Chief Inspector Gamache and his librarian wife Reine-Marie are enjoying their annual stay at the Manoir Bellechasse, deep in the forest east of Montreal and not far from Three Pines. Aside from the Gamaches, all of the guests are members of the Finney-Morrow family; and with the exception of Gamache's friends Peter and Clara Morrow from Three Pines, they are a strange and surly bunch. (SPOILER AHEAD - though nothing that isn't stated in the promotional reviews.) Mrs. Finney has commissioned a statue of her first husband (the father of her grown children) and Gamache's holiday is derailed when the statue falls on one of the family members. Is it murder? Who...and how?

As in the earlier Gamache books, Penny doesn't knock it for six with her plot resolution. But this is a classy police procedural series with wonderful qualities, and that compensates nicely for the forgettable murderers and the lack of fireworks when Gamache pulls apart the last layers of the case. The appeal is in the respectful interactions of the team, the vivid characters, the genuine interest in personality and motivation, and the impeccable, literate prose. "A Rule Against Murder" makes the most of its Quebec heritage, too, with gentle reminders of the transformation of Quebec society in the 1960s and the polite tension between Francophones and Anglos. This book is a most rewarding offering in a series with great appeal.

Linda Bulger, 2010

A Rule Against Murder (APA: The Murder Stone) finds Armand Gamache, Chief Inspector of the Sūreté du Québec, celebrating his 35th wedding anniversary at the Manoir Bellechasse, a luxurious and isolated inn not far from the village of Three Pines, in southern Quebec, Canada. Armand and Reine-Maire share the inn with the wealthy and dysfunctional Finney family, who think the Gamaches run a shop. The Gamaches are delighted when the final members of the Finney reunion, the dreaded Spot and Claire, turn out to be their old friends Peter and Clara Morrow from Three Pines. When the oldest Finney daughter is crushed by the newly installed statue of the Finney patriarch, Armand knows the murderer must either be a member of the Finney family or part of the hotel staff, but he can't figure out how the massive statue was toppled from its base. The snobbish Finneys continually denigrate Armand's investigation and his infamous father, but Armand treats everyone with respect as he sorts through the suspects and clues. Penny's beautiful prose brings the eccentric characters and the beautiful Manoir Bellechasse to vivid life. The 4th book in the series, this atmospheric novel is a finalist for the 2009 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel and is my favorite in the series so far.
http://www.stopyourekillingme.com/P_Authors/Penny_Louise.html

I can't give more than three stars. Ms Penny continues to be strong on characterization which I enjoy but the way she has the murder committed is completely outlandish. The way the victim is killed is physically possible but too many variables had to be exactly in place for the killer to pull it off. It just wouldn't happen. This isn't the first time Ms. Penny has had a problem with how a murder has been committed. She needs to be less exotic and more realistic in that area for my taste. That sort of thing just doesn't wash. I love her writing and will read her again just for her style. Let's hope she thinks her next "murder" through a little more thoroughly!