In this 4th book in the 'Chief Inspector Armand Gamache' series, the Canadian detective investigates a very puzzling case. The book can be read as a standalone.
*****
Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec is celebrating his 35th wedding anniversary. To commemorate the happy occasion Gamache and his librarian wife Reine-Marie are enjoying a vacation at the upscale Manoir Bellechasse near the village of Three Pines - where many of their quirky friends live.
Other guests at the Manoir Bellechasse are the Finney/Morrow clan, who are having their annual family reunion.
The matriarch, Irene Finney, is hosting the middle-aged children from her first marriage to multi-millionaire businessman Charles Morrow. In addition to Irene's current husband Bert Finney, the attendees include her offspring who are (from oldest to youngest):
- Thomas Morrow and his wife Sandra - an unpleasant couple who expect everyone to defer to them.
- Julia Martin (née Morrow) - who's in the midst of divorcing Ponzi scheme criminal David Martin.
- Peter Morrow and his wife Clara - both of whom are artists living in Three Pines. They also happen to be friends of the Gamaches.
- Marianna Morrow - an architect who brought her nine-year-old child Bean.
The Finney/Morrow tribe is beset by secrets and lies, and the family members dislike each other intensely. Mother Irene is cold, mean, and condescending and the brothers and sisters constantly spat and put each other down. Much of this behavior is a holdover from childhood, when the children competed for the their father's love and attention.
During the family reunion, a statue of Charles Morrow - commissioned by his wife - is to be raised on the hotel grounds. The Morrow offspring have ambiguous feelings about this (paid for) honor, but, as always, they defer to their controlling mother.
For the Gamaches, things go smoothly for their first few days at the Manoir Bellechasse. They enjoy delicious food prepared by Chef Véronique Langlois;
relax and stroll through the picturesque grounds;
and engage in polite conversation and nightly bridge games with the other guests.
The Gamaches never mention their professions, however, and the snobby Finney/Morrows come to believe Armand is a shopkeeper and Reine-Marie is a cleaning woman. The priggish family is disabused of this notion, however, when a murder occurs and the 'shopkeeper' leads the investigation. This part is very amusing. LOL 😊
The murder weapon is the statue of Charles Morrow, which topples and kills a family member. This seems to be an impossible crime since moving the sculpture - which weighs tons - would require an entire football team or heavy machinery.....things that would be noticed.
Gamache calls in his homicide team, Agent Isabelle Lacoste and Inspector Jean-Guy Beauvoir, who assist with the investigation.
Both Beauvoir and Gamache find it hard to be completely objective however: Gamache because he's friends with Peter and Clara Morrow; and Beauvoir because he has an odd interest in Chef Véronique, who seems familiar to him.
Other characters in the story include Madame Clementine Dubois - owner of the Manoir Bellechasse; maître d' Pierre Patenaude - a long-time employee who runs an impeccable dining room and trains the wait staff; Elliot Byrne, a new waiter who's insolent to Pierre and makes fun of the guests behind their backs; Colleen, a young gardener; Yves Pelletier - the sculptor who created the statue of Charles Morrow; and several residents of Three Pines, including the innkeeper Gabri and the disgruntled poet Ruth and her duck Rosa.
In the course of the story we obtain information about Armand Gamache's backstory - some of which is quite surprising, and learn details of Jean-Guy Beauvoir's personal life with his wife Enid.
Gamache eventually catches the perp, but not before a harrowing scene where he almost loses his life.
I enjoy Penny's Armand Gamache books but find that they tend to be overly 'literary - by which I mean the main characters' thoughts tend to be philosophical treatises. Most people don't think like this and it doesn't ring true. The author may be using this technique to convey her personal ideology, but it's distracting IMO.
Still, this is an enjoyable mystery, recommended to readers who like suspense novels, especially fans of Armand Gamache.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Jim Gaffigan
Jim Gaffigan is a comedian, actor, and author. Jim and his wife Jeannie have five small children, and raising them is a challenge. It's also a rich source of humor, which Jim shares in this book.
Jim Gaffigan and his wife Jeannie
Jim Gaffigan with his wife and children
Jim and his family live in a two-bedroom apartment on the 5th floor of a New York City walk-up (no elevator). So Jim would really like you to buy this book so he can afford to move to a bigger place. LOL
New York walk up
Many of the observations in this book come from Jim's comedy specials, so if you've seen those, you're familiar with his humor - which is clean and family friendly. Jim talks and writes a lot about his children and explains: "My blurbs about my children.....are meant to be funny, silly, and hopefully insightful. I enjoy finding the humor in parenting."
Jim Gaffigan comedy special
Rather than a traditional review I'll give some examples of Jim's stories. Just picture the comic saying this stuff.....
- Having five children has really made me appreciate the more important things in life: the sublime state of being alone. Of course now I'm never alone.
Jim is never alone
- I have children like I have male pattern baldness; it's an incurable condition. Symptoms include: constant fatigue, inability to sleep, and of course extreme sleep disruption.
- When I was single I was a loner by choice....the thought of a roommate to a single me was absurd. Now I have many roommates: I have an 8-year-old, a 6-year-old, a 3-year-old, a 1-year-old, and I don't think I've even met the other one yet. Ten years ago I could barely get a date and now my apartment is crawling with babies. It's like I left some peanut butter out overnight.
- As a dad you're Vice President. You are part of the executive branch of the family but you are the partner with the weaker authority. In your children's eyes you mostly fulfill a ceremonial role of attending pageants and ordering pizza. Jeannie is Bill Clinton and I am Al Gore.....I'm the dork reminding them to turn off the lights.
That'll be one large supreme pizza and one large cheese pizza...….
- When your baby is born.....the masses of family and friends want to be assured the mother is okay and get information on the baby. For some reason it's really important for the people to know how much the baby weighs. "How much does she weigh?" That seems rude. She's not even a day old and people seem obsessed with my daughter's weight. She was nine pounds but I told my friends she was 8 pounds, 16 ounces, because it sounded thinner.
- Giving a newborn clothes makes no sense at all. Newborns can't dress themselves and they never go out. I've been around five newborns and not one of them has asked "Tonight I'm meeting some friends for sushi. Can you help pick out an outfit?"
- What's really stupid is baby versions of adult shoes. My brother-in-law Patrick bought our then 3-month-old Jack tiny Timberland hiking boots. Our baby couldn't walk, let alone hike. Patrick explained that the boots would be cute. Cute yes, but only because they're ironic. A baby wearing construction worker boots that weigh more than he does is mean. It's like giving a blind person a microscope.
- Toddlerhood is one of my favorite periods of childhood development....not only because you can finally enter them in beauty pageants. All healthy babies eventually walk....[and].....I guess walking IS impressive after ten months of just lying around. Actually they don't immediately walk or even toddle. They cruise or hold themselves up with furniture in search of the hardest and sharpest surface to bang their head on. When they finally let go and take a few steps it's more like a stumble or a stagger, like they are a drunken old man or a zombie extra from the Walking Dead.
- I'm ashamed how often I lie to my children. Maybe they aren't all lies.....some of it's acting. You act excited to read a story for the 500th time. You act impressed someone went to the bathroom on the toilet. The excitement I show to some of my children's scribbles should get me a Golden Globe nomination.
- I'm not a man with many hobbies besides eating, sleeping, watching an occasional football game, and of course eating. I just like spending time with my children, although I'm always amazed at how little I have in common with them. My 6-year-old son Jack actually doesn't like mashed potatoes. Yes, mashed potatoes, one of the greatest things on earth. The ice cream of potatoes. Of course he loves french fries, hash browns, and baked potatoes. But mashed potatoes might as well be sewer sludge. "EWWWWW ....mashed potatoes."
- Little kids simply have bad taste in everything. Little kids taste in clothing is baffling. if you ask a 3-year-old boy to pick something out to wear to the park the outfit will definitely clash and most likely not include pants. "Okay, why don't we wear pants AND a shirt instead of goggles and a hat."
Kids dress themselves in quirky outfits
- Walking in NYC alone is great....[lots of interesting sights and sounds]. But when you add a couple of kids and a stroller, walking becomes a vastly different experience. Strolling a kid down a sidewalk seems like it would be easy except that a stroller is the Bermuda Triangle of kids shoes. You can't stroll a kid half a block before they only have one shoe on. You have no idea when or how they got it off or how you missed it being flung away. Then there are the kids that are walking with you.....I try to wrangle my brood off deathtraps like treeguards, stoops, ramps, and poles - and try to prevent them from getting too close to the curb where giant trucks and mindless cyclists are inches away from plowing them over.
- The subway is a fast and economical way to get around. But from the moment the turnstile smacks your kid in the head, til the time your child terrifies you by almost falling in the gap between the platform and the train, to the kid inevitably licking the subway pole that 800 million filthy hands have touched, to almost missing your stop because it's too crowded to get off, to carrying the stroller up three flights of subway stairs.....this form of transportation becomes more of a treacherous pilgrimage than a way of getting from point A to point B.
Taking kids on subways is nerve wracking
- Recently on a warm sunny day, I found myself preparing to singlehandedly take all five of my kids to the park. It is probably easier to land a quadruple jump in ice skating than to get my five children to depart our house in a timely manner. When you have little kids you can't just say 'come on, let's go' and walk out the door. You must always add 'find the shoe time' to your calculation of estimated time of departure. If it's winter and there are hats, gloves, scarves, and mittens involved.....just forget it. You might as well just stay in. it will be the spring thaw by the time you get them bundled.
- I'm getting fat. Luckily my gut is intentional. I'm actually preparing for a big role. Sure, it's a cinnamon roll but I want there to be room for it. Okay, fine I could lose some weight but I'm not gonna hide behind some lame excuse. My paunch is no one's fault but my kids. Have you seen what a six year old wants to eat...."For dinner get me a mac and cheese, a handful of pretzels and a half a cupcake." They don't actually ask for half a cupcake but half a cupcake is all they'll actually eat. What are you supposed to do with the other half of the cupcake..... or half a plate of french fries they leave in a restaurant. This is why being a parent is the opposite of the Jenny Craig diet. I can just see the pitch. "I gained 20 pounds just eating small portions of my children's leftovers."
- Last summer I took my family to Disneyworld. What I forgot was that Orlando in August is roughly the same temperature as the surface of the sun. What I also didn't realize is that going to Disney as an adult is like standing in line at the DMV. The only real difference is at the DMV you leave with a driver's licence. It's amazing how much money it costs to be uncomfortable all day and listen to your children whine and complain. Disney is not a vacation. To me the term Disney vacation is equivalent to the term Chuck E. Cheese fine dining.
- Last summer I had four chldren and I noticed there were only three Eskimo Pies left in the freezer for dessert. The first thought that came to me was "Well looks like I'm eating three Eskimo Pies. In spite of my lack of parental instincts, in the end i did the right thing. i only ate one. That way the four of them could split the other two evenly. How else are they gonna learn math?
"Dad is Fat" is 288 pages long. So if these excerpts amused you, there's plenty more where they came from. People with children might appreciate the humor a bit more than childless readers....but I think anyone would get a laugh from the book.
Recommended to readers who like funny books.
Rating: 3.5 stars
Aspiring writer Stacy Kim is working as a receptionist in a Manhattan law firm while she mulls over ideas for the great American novel.
When Stacy sees a prize-winning photo at an art gallery, lightning strikes. The picture - a shot of a bride on a beach holding a gun - triggers the idea for a story.
When Stacy researches the photo she learns that the picture was taken near Portland, Oregon ten years ago. The bride, Megan Cahill, was widowed on her wedding day when her wealthy husband Raymond Cahill was shot in their beach house.
Valuable collectibles were taken from Raymond's safe and Megan, who was severely shell-shocked and suffering from memory loss, somehow wandered off with a gun. Photographer Kathy Moran happened to be passing by, and got the picture.
The police considered Megan a suspect, but she was never charged, and neither was anyone else.
In order to research her book, Stacy pulls up stakes and moves to Oregon. She plans to interview people involved with the Cahill case before writing a fictionalized version of the incident.
In flashbacks we learn that photographer Kathy Moran - who took the bride's photo - started her career as a defense attorney. Fifteen years ago she outwitted a cocky assistant district attorney called Jack Booth, who was distracted by Kathy's beauty and sex appeal.
Jack was embarrassed by the incident and the upward trajectory of his career was affected.
Jack got some of his own back a few years later, when Kathy became a drug abuser and an embezzler. Kathy agreed to give up her law career to avoid prosecution, and - after rehab - became a successful photographer.
Jump ahead to Raymond Cahill's murder, and Jack is assisting the district attorney on the case. Since Kathy is a witness, she and Jack become re-acquainted, and Jack feels those sparks once again.
Meanwhile, Jack and his colleagues are investigating persons of interest in Raymond Cahill's murder. These include his wife Megan; Megan's first husband - an abusive former football player; Raymond's business enemies; a sadistic drug-dealing thug; thieves who target collectibles; etc.
However, as I mentioned above, no one is charged.
As Stacy digs into the Cahill case NOW, secrets are exposed.....and the killer is eventually unmasked.
Trigger warning: The story contains ugly scenes of sexual abuse, which don't ring true, but are still disturbing.
My early theory about the murderer(s) was partially correct, but for the wrong reasons.....so the author hoodwinked me successfully. 🙂
All in all, this is an enjoyable, if somewhat overly convoluted, mystery with a bit of romance. ❤ Recommended to fans of the genre.
Rating: 3 stars
William Shatner as Captain Kirk
In this book William Shatner, the original 'Captain Kirk' from Star Trek, talks about the birth of the original TV series, the long struggle it took to get it on the air, and the people involved in making it a success.
Star Trek was created by producer and writer Gene Roddenberry, who was fascinated with space since childhood.
Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek
It took years, though - and a lot of missteps - before a studio picked up the show and a successful pilot was made. Eventually Roddenberry assembled the core cast, including Shatner (Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (Spock), Nichelle Nichols (Uhura), DeForest Kelley (Dr. McCoy), James Doohan (Scotty), ...George Takei (Sulu), William Koenig (Chekov), and Majel Barrett (Nurse Chapel).
Leonard Nimoy as Spock
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
DeForest Kelley as Dr. McCoy
James Doohan as Scotty
George Takei as Sulu
William Koenig as Chekov
Majel Barrett as Nurse Chapel
An interesting tidbit: Majel Barrett was Roddenberry's girlfriend and played the first officer (Number One) in the original pilot, which failed. The public wasn't ready for a woman in the role.
Shatner's writing is light and breezy and contains fun interesting anecdotes. One Star Trek episode, for instance, featured alien women with green skin.
It was hard to get the color right on this alien woman with green skin
As a test before shooting an actress was slathered in green makeup and filmed....but the developed footage came back with flesh-toned skin. A more intense shade of green makeup was used, with the same result. In desperation, the makeup folks tried very thick, very dark green goop - to no avail....the skin still looked beige. Eventually a call to the film developers revealed that they were exhausting themselves, working overtime to 'fix' the skin color problem. (ha ha ha)
Another story details how difficult it was to get Spock's pointy ears right.
It took time to get Spock's pointy ears right
The studio, being cost conscious, wanted the ears done on the cheap. So one inexpensive fake ear after another was tried, but they all looked terrible....and Nimoy - not wanting to look ridiculous - was becoming seriously perturbed. In the end, 'expensive' ears had to be ordered behind the backs of the bean counters. Moreover, Spock was originally supposed to be half Martian with red skin!
Spock was originally supposed to have red skin
In any case it took a long time to get Spock's appearance just right (pointed ears, devilish eyebrows, the iconic hairdo), and required a lot of negotiation with network honchos. They thought the public wouldn't accept an alien-looking crew member. (How wrong they were!)
When Star Trek was in danger of being cancelled after the first season Roddenberry recruited a couple of avid fans to organize a 'keep Star Trek on the air' campaign. One enterprising woman sneaked into the VIP parking lot of a Hollywood studio and slapped a 'Star Trek' bumper sticker on every limousine and luxury car.
Star Trek bumper sticker
Johnny Carson probably went home with a Star Trek sticker on his car that night! The fans were convincing and the show was renewed. By season three, however, Star Trek was out of luck. It was stuck in a Friday night time slot (a death knell), the budget was slashed, and the episodes became mundane (or worse). Viewership fell and the show was cancelled. In a way this was a blessing because it led to many spinoff series and Star Trek movies.
Shatner covers every aspect of the original TV series, including the actors, costumes, set design, special effects, stories, scripts, directors, producers, lighting, editing, etc. To get the inside scoop Shatner interviewed many of the people involved with the show and includes their stories verbatim. This adds a lot of personality and interest to the book.
Star Trek costumes
Star Trek set design
Star Trek special effects
Though the Star Trek franchise eventually became a juggernaut, the original series wasn't a big success (at first) - and producing it wasn't all sweetness and light. Shatner reveals that Nimoy had serious disagreements with Roddenberry about many issues, including the sale of Star Trek merchandise (the actors didn't benefit) and the sale of blooper reels (which Nimoy thought were embarrassing).
Star Trek merchandise
Moreover, when Shatner interviewed his co-stars, many revealed hostile feelings toward him. In their opinion Shatner made it his business to inflate his role and cut theirs. In fact James Doohan refused to speak to Shatner and wasn't interviewed for the book.
From Shatner's point of view he doesn't recall doing this.....but he probably did. I remember Shatner - a married man - had a reputation for being conceited and trying to 'romance' (wink wink) all the female guest stars. (He doesn't talk about this in the book. LOL)
I've always liked Star Trek and I thoroughly enjoyed the book. My one caveat: I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Shatner, and he tends to talk too fast sometimes. This is a minor quibble though.
If you're Star Trek fan you'll like this book. Me....I'm inspired to go back and watch all the original Star Trek episodes looking for things that Shatner mentions.
Rating: 4.5 stars
