Book number 71 was A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny. It was a Chief Inspector Armand Gamache mystery. Gamache has two murders to solve in this book. He is called to Three Pines at Christmastime to solve the electrocution murder of CC de Poitiers, a disliked self-styled guru of a philosophy called Li Bien, in which all emotions have colors. These emotions and colors are supressed until only whiteness remains and along with it, calmness. But she was not a well-liked woman. She treated her husband and daughter abysmally and looked with disdain on the villagers. The other murder Gamache must solve is the murder of a vagrant woman who was strangled to death outside a department store in Montréal. She was identified only as “Elle” or “She.” Something about this murder intrigues Gamache and he sets out to determine who Elle really was and who killed her.
The usual cast of characters of Three Pines is involved: Peter and Clara Murrow, Ruth Zardo, Gabri, Olivier, and the others. They help Gamache and Jean Guy Beauvoir and the team (yes, Agent Yvette Nichol has managed to get herself assigned to the team again, much to the dismay of everyone involved) put together the puzzle pieces and with the help of Clara’s art, the case is solved. Seventy-one down, 29 to go.
I wish I had more time to read….