The Cruelest Month
A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel, Book 3
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Narrated by:
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Ralph Cosham
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By:
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Louise Penny
About this listen
Welcome to Three Pines, where the cruelest month is about to deliver on its threat. It's spring in the tiny, forgotten village; buds are on the trees, and the first flowers are struggling through the newly thawed earth. But not everything is meant to return to life....
When some 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?
Brilliant, compassionate Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec is called to investigate in a case that will force him to face his own ghosts as well as those of a seemingly idyllic town where relationships are far more dangerous than they seem.
©2007 Louise Penny (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Falling Off Air
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- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
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Robin Ballantyne's life is finally coming together. After learning she was pregnant with twins and being abandoned by her irresponsible boyfriend, Adam, she's settling into life as a single mother. But one night, after putting the children to bed, she hears an argument and suddenly, a body falls past her window. Running outside, she finds the body of Paula Carmichael, a renowned activist.
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Rich, developed and unusual
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Hum If You Don't Know the Words
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Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a 10-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising.
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Completely wrong accents
- By Debbie on 02-12-22
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Hark! The Herald Angels Scream
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- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
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That there is darkness at the heart of the Yuletide season should not surprise. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol is filled with scenes that are unsettling. The hideous children - Want and Ignorance - beneath the robe of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. In the finest versions of this story, the best parts are the terrifying parts. Best-selling author and editor Christopher Golden shares his love for Christmas horror stories with this anthology of all-new short fiction from some of the most talented and original writers of horror today.
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Some good, some clunkers. Some fun, none scary.
- By Max Trivial on 12-24-18
By: Christopher Golden - editor, and others
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Stranger on the Shore
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- Narrated by: Jeremy York
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Twenty years ago little Brian Arlington was kidnapped from his family's Long Island estate and was never seen again. The trail went cold, but investigative journalist Griff Hadley has always thought there was more to the story - much more. When the Arlingtons' patriarch invites him to stay at their estate to research his true crime book, Griff can't say no. It's the story of a lifetime. But not everyone is happy about Griff's presence. Relatives and staff alike regard him coldly, including Pierce Mather, the Arlingtons' attractive lawyer.
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Possibly the most enjoyable mystery romance I've ever read! Quintessential Lanyon!
- By Christopher P. on 09-19-15
By: Josh Lanyon
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Three Daughters of Eve
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Set across Istanbul and Oxford, from the 1980s to the present day, Three Daughters of Eve is a sweeping tale of faith and friendship, tradition and modernity, love and an unexpected betrayal. Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife and mother, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground - an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor.
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Review 3 daughters of Eve
- By CA on 04-28-18
By: Elif Shafak
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The Hawley Book of the Dead
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Revelation "Reve" Dyer grew up with her grandmother’s family stories, stretching back centuries to Reve’s ancestors, who founded the town of Hawley Five Corners, Massachusetts. Their history is steeped in secrets, for few outsiders know that an ancient magic runs in the Dyer women’s blood, and that Reve is a magician whose powers are all too real. Reve and her husband are world-famous Las Vegas illusionists. They have three lovely young daughters, a beautiful home, and what seems like a charmed life. But Reve’s world is shattered....
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It sounded like something I could really love.....
- By Andrea on 10-01-14
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A Dark and Stormy Murder
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Lena London's literary dreams are coming true - as long as she can avoid any real - life villains.... Camilla Graham's best-selling suspense novels inspired Lena London to become a writer, so when she lands a job as Camilla's new assistant, she can't believe her luck. Not only will she help her idol craft an enchanting new mystery, she'll get to live rent-free in Camilla's gorgeous Victorian home in the quaint town of Blue Lake, Indiana.
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Human or computer reading?
- By Mountain Dancer on 11-06-18
By: Julia Buckley
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The Road Home
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When a car accident leaves photographer Burke Crenshaw in need of temporary full-time care, he finds himself back in the one place no forty-year-old chooses to be--his childhood bedroom. There, in the Vermont home where he grew up, Burke begins the long process of recuperation, and watches as his widowed father finds happiness in a new relationship that's a constant reminder of everything Burke wants and lacks. Exploring local history, Burke discovers an intriguing series of letters from a Civil War soldier to his fianc.
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No need to check your scepticism at the door!
- By Orlando on 08-23-13
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Sex, Murder, and a Double Latte
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- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
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Thriller scribe Sophie Katz is as hard-boiled as a woman who drinks Grande Caramel Brownie Frappuccionos can be. So Sophie knows it's not paranoia, or post-divorce, living-alone-again jitters, when she becomes convinced that a crazed reader is sneaking into her apartment to reenact scenes from her books. The police, however, can't tell a good plot from an unmarked grave.
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Disappointing
- By Autumn on 01-01-06
By: Kyra Davis
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Winter Journey
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Halina Shore is a Polish born forensic dentist living in Australia. When she travels to Poland to take part in the investigation of a war crime, she finds herself at the center of a bitter struggle in a community that has been divided by a grim legacy. As the investigation proceeds, her professional assignment becomes a confronting personal odyssey as the truth about her own past begins to emerge.
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Historical Story Marred by Unnecessary Fluff
- By Debbie on 11-30-15
By: Diane Armstrong
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Dear Amy
- By: Helen Callaghan
- Narrated by: Michelle Ford
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
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Margot Lewis is a teacher at an exclusive high school in the English university town of Cambridge. In her spare time, she writes an advice column, "Dear Amy", for the local newspaper. When one of Margot's students, 15-year-old Katie, disappears, the school and the town fear the worst. And then Margot gets a "Dear Amy" letter unlike any of the ones she's received before. It's a desperate plea for rescue from a girl who says she is being held captive and in terrible danger - a girl called Bethan Avery, who was abducted from the local area 20 years ago and never found.
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Stunning debut
- By Mystery Maven on 11-18-16
By: Helen Callaghan
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What listeners say about The Cruelest Month
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- Jefferson
- 09-28-21
Three Pines, Spiritualism, Murder, and Arnot
Starting The Cruelest Month (2008), the third Inspector Gamache novel by Louise Penny, was like reclining in a familiar chair by a crackling fire while snacking on a maple syrup garnished brioche while sipping a creamy café au lait. Almost too comfortable. At first. To Penny’s credit, she’s soon working twisted shadows into even the most benign and healthy seeming of people and places, introducing an old haunted house, and channeling her inner wiccan/psychologist. “Was something more sinister at work behind the pleasant facade of Three Pines?” Oh, you betcha!
In the first eight chapters Penny returns us to the main setting of her murder mystery series, Three Pines. The Quebec village (“where poets take walks with ducks and art falls from the sky”) is quirky and cozy without being trendy or edgey and, like Shangri La or Narnia, is only found accidentally by lost people who need it. Living in Three Pines is Penny’s recurring cast of eccentric and appealing people: the sensitive and sensible about-to-be-discovered artist Clara Morrow and her already successful but secretly jealous artist husband Peter, the prickly old foul-mouthed poet Ruth Zardo, the gay couple immaculate Olivier and disheveled Gabri who run the town B&B and bistro slash antique shop, and the large generous black former psychologist and current bookstore owner Myrna. Because none of those recurring characters could ever be guilty of murder (we assume), Penny introduces some new ones: luminous Madeleine and her generous friend Hazel, Hazel’s needy university student daughter Sophie, the widower town grocer Monsieur Beliveau, Odile (a bad poet who runs an organic shop) and her boyfriend Giles (an ex-lumberjack who crafts beautiful furniture from dead trees and talks to live ones), and the mousy wiccan Jeanne Chauvet. Jeanne, who is visiting Three Pines for the first time, quickly finds herself presiding over not one but two seances, the second of which takes place in the abandoned and cursed and or haunted old Hadley House and ends with someone apparently dying of fright.
If it is another Three Pines murder, who better to find the killer than Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec’s homicide department? In his fifties, he possesses a large, elegant figure, deep brown eyes, strong face, and laugh lines around his eyes. Though his native tongue is French, he speaks English with a British accent, having studied history in Cambridge U. He is incredibly intelligent and well-read, quoting at will from classics and contemporary poets. He is observant and patient (“I listen to everybody”), being especially interested in people’s homes and emotions (“The most important thing in a murder investigation is how people feel”). He trusts his intuitions. Unlike many of today’s detective heroes, he’s happily married and has successful children but no alcohol or demons poisoning his inside. He likes to recruit ostracized agents for his team. He is THE ideal father/teacher figure.
But will Gamache be able to solve the present mystery while having to deal with a media assault on his character and career engineered without his knowledge by his best friend from childhood Superintendent Michel Brevbeuf who has for decades secretly hated Gamache’s ability to live happily despite adversity? It’s clear that the five or so years old Arnot case (in which righteous Gamache split the Surete in two by bringing down a corrupt Surete superintendent) is still hanging over Gamache’s head. On his murder investigation team, in fact, two young agents are spying on him and sabotaging the case, the ever-unpleasant Yvette Nicole and the ever-eager Robert Lemieux. (Luckily, he also has reliable agents Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste) Will Gamache’s inveterate good faith and desire to rehabilitate lost causes cause his downfall? If this third book in the series follows the pattern of the first two, the murder case will be solved while the Arnot case is developed a little further without being resolved. We do learn here what the amoral Arnot was doing to merit being exposed, prosecuted, and imprisoned five years ago: destroying indigenous villages with agents provocateur, alcohol, and murder.
Penny writes rotating every page or two or less among the points of view of her varied cast of characters. She excels at getting in the heads of different people. However, by narrating via so many point of view characters as she tells her story, she may at times cheat by hiding certain key information from the reader that the characters would surely think about, whether it’s who’s side they’re on in the Arnot Surete cold civil war or how they killed someone (though this last is probably a flaw of most detective genre stories).
Penny writes interesting Quebecois cultural details (spring hailstorms, bear poop, French and English, hockey references, etc.). And food: creamy Brie or pate on crisp baguettes, eggs Benedict (with Canadian bacon!), pear and cranberry tart, maple laced brioches, frothy and steamy cups of rich and aromatic coffee, and more.
And she writes vivid similes, like “She looked as if made up by a vindictive mortician,” “dark circles under her eyes, as if grief had physically struck her,” and “Emboldened by the light, as though what they held was swords, they moved deeper into the house.”
And it’s a pleasure to eavesdrop on the witty Three Pines locals and on the wise Gamache and his agents. The characters talk about life and human nature, like the concept of the Near Enemy: unhealthy emotions masquerading as healthy ones (attachment as love, pity as compassion, indifference as equanimity). Gamache’s truism “It’s our secrets that make us sick” works perfectly in the story, as does the fact that some people can’t stand seeing other people (especially friends) happy.
Although Penny is prime when setting people to talking, teasing, philosophizing, questioning, musing, and so on, so far her action scenes are unfortunate. Each of her first three Gamache novels features a climax involving violent action, and each time it feels contrived, unbelievable, and even absurd. Luckily, such scenes are short and rare and don’t detract much from the overall excellence of her stories.
Ralph Cosham reads the audiobook with his appealing voice giving every moment in the novel the perfect pace and emphasis and mood without ever showing off.
This novel was a page-turning, moving, and humorous read, and I’m looking forward to the fourth Gamache story.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Tim
- 07-29-19
...Breeding lilacs out of the dead land….
This is a wonderful, entertaining book, subtle, yet not obscure in its underlying mystery, and engrossing in another which envelopes it. It is sensitive, literate, and wonderfully conceived, particularly in its revelation of the series setting, the village of Three Pines. To my surprise, I find it to be the finest of the first three novels. Until now, I have regarded Dorothy Sayers as the most-literary of mystery writers. No longer.
By the way, I, myself—having started with the sixth in the series—would advise reading the titles in order. When I come to the sixth book, once again,I plan to reread it. There is such continuity from book-to-book that I wish to reclaim what I may have missed upon the initial reading.
The Audible editions are beautifully narrated by Ralph Cosham. As I have discovered, the mixture of narration and text is extremely rich, and at times I much enjoyed reading the ebook while listening to the narration.
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- Denise R. Corneil
- 07-16-19
great story!
The plot has lots of twists and turns. interesting back story. would highly recommend to mystery lovers.
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- Betty
- 05-04-19
Always a treat
I love this series and the narration is perfect fit for the stories and the locale.
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- susan
- 12-05-15
Characters who become people
While in my spare time, mysteries are a pleasure I hope for. Few are as well written as the ganache series. Louise Penny manages to create a small town populated by people with distinction and individual voices. In addition you come to know the traits of the investigative team and its leader. I strongly recommend this series
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- RussGinEG
- 05-26-17
Best of the Inspector Gamache so far
If you could sum up The Cruelest Month in three words, what would they be?
Excellent character development
Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?
Yes. The last book in this series I read I felt was very predictable and I had figured out the murdered half way through the book. This story wasn't as predictable, which made for much more entertaining reading/listening. Louise Penny did a great job of moving the characters to the next level and built on the relationships of the various townspeople and Surete officers.
Which character – as performed by Ralph Cosham – was your favorite?
While it would be easy to say Armand Gamache, I would say Jean Guy Beauvoit. He had an important breakthrough with Gamache in this book that was a long time coming.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
No, but I did look forward to it with each "session".
Any additional comments?
Now that some of the characters have changed (for various reasons and ways) I am anxious to read the next book. Louise Penny got me hooked again.
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- FTexas
- 12-17-15
Loved it! I was hooked from the start.
I really enjoy the characters in this book and the mystery she weaves with them.
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- Federica
- 05-19-16
outstanding, as usual
makes me want to move to Three Pines. I adore Louise Penny and her inspector.
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- Karen G
- 11-29-22
Just the best
I can't get enough of this series, I'm excited to see what happens in the future books with these wonderful characters
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-27-22
Typically great Louise Penny
I love Louise Penny stories and this one was great. I kept me guessing and was the best Gammage story so far.
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