The Cruelest Month, Louise Penny's third novel in the acclaimed Armand Gamache series, is a nod to T. S. Eliot's
The Waste Land, which he opens thus: "April is the cruellest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain..." Eliot may be referring to that time of the year when everything all around is Spring, about "how difficult it was for those who didn't bloom when all about was new life and hope," but Penny repurposes it to her own tastes, for a murder mystery that unfolds against the backdrop of Easter celebrations in the village of Three Pines. Thus what opens as a seance at the supposedly hunted Old Hadley house leads to the inevitable (aka murder), leaving Gamache, accompanied by his side-kick Jean Guy, to solve the case all the while reeling from a bureaucratic fallout at the Sûreté. Delving deep into psychological themes of
near enemy, compassion and pity, Louise Penny weaves a cleverly staged whodunit that's not only engrossing but also food for thought.
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