The Cruelest Month (Book 3) Re-Read

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Posts & Discussion

The following post(s), written by a guest blogger, are open for you to participate with your comments. Spoiler Alert! These posts and discussions can include spoilers for the book's plot. We recommend that you finish reading the book before delving any further.

The Cruelest Month, Part 2

Posted by Robin Agnew on May 26th, 2014 · 158 comments

In the second half of the book, things begin to amp up, and the damaging newspaper articles about Gamache begin to get worse. Beauvoir encounters Gamache and Chauvet sitting together, and is angry as he thinks she’s a charlatan. She says “I was born with a caul . . . and you were too.” The meaning of this becomes clear later.

Hazel plans Madeleine’s funeral and thinks “Everything had changed. Even her grammar. Suddenly she lived in the past tense. And the singular.” What a profound description of grief. Hazel is busy waiting on Sophie, who has injured her foot.

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The Cruelest Month, Part 1

Posted by Robin Agnew on May 19th, 2014 · 142 comments

As a bookseller, I receive literally hundreds of advanced reading copies every year. I use the scientific method of reading “what calls to me”—so a vast majority of the “pile” goes unread. Several years ago of course I got an advanced reading copy of Still Life, which languished in the pile. The cover didn’t call to me. But then I got a letter from Julia Spencer-Fleming, who uses her powers for good: she sometimes sends around a letter to booksellers highlighting a book she feels passionately about, and Still Life was the topic of one of the first of these letters.

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Robin AgnewRobin Agnew is the co-owner of Aunt Agatha's Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she and her husband Jamie have sold books together for 21 years. She is a reviewer for Mystery Scene and you can read her reviews on Facebook, Twitter and on the Aunt Agatha's website. She and her husband and their bookstore were recently honored by the Mystery Writers of America with the Raven Award.