This is the first not centred in Three Pines, and I found it less appealing.
A slightly Agatha Christie closed community novel – a dysfunctional family descends for a reunion on an up market country hotel (where Inspector Gamache and his wife happen to be staying) and unsurprisingly one is murdered.
The family all loath each other so there are plenty of suspects, although it transpires that the hotel’s maître D holds a grudge against a family member and is the perpetrator.
I found this conventional and disappointing – the richness of the Three Pines community, although peripherally present, is largely absent. Penny seems to have a fascination, which I don’t share, with obscurely engineered (mechanically) murders – no.363 involves the victim being electrocuted while watching an outdoor ice hockey match; this one involves a statue sliding seemingly impossibly off its plinth; the solution involves references to the construction of The Burgers of Calais, and how sculptors allowed their creations to be moved around.
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