Barbara M. reviewed on 6/18/2018 + 147 more book reviews

This is the second of the Armand Gamache series I've read. The first was A Still Life, the first book in the series. That one was pretty decent so I decided to put A Fatal Grace, the next book, on my paperbackswap.com wish list. This one is OK but there were a few things that didn't make this a 5-star book: (1) although many of the characters were the same as in book one, I still sometimes had difficulty remembering who was who (an alphabetical list of the characters with a brief description of each at the front or back of the book would have been helpful); (2) the Agent Nichol character was not particularly likeable in book one but she had become pretty despicable in A Fatal Grace (the description of her physical attributes in book 2 made it clear that she was a very unattractive person devoid of personality [other than being spiteful] and with no taste in clothing; since I read book one many months ago, I thought I just didn't remember her character well from the first book; however, in a 2-star Amazon review, another reader was also perplexed about the deterioration of the Nichol character from book 1 to 2; (3) the way the murder was executed was very convoluted and unbelievable. About halfway or 2/3 of the way through the book, I had an idea of who the murderer was. I was correct but the way the murder went down was even more unbelievable when the killer was finally identified. The book was an easy read so I put book 3 on my paperbackswap.com wish list.

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