Holiday Reading

I am back! The holiday is over and work starts tomorrow.   Hope you like my pic of Santa taken on December 16th at the Jacksonville International Airport.

My holiday reading was The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny.   This was my third Three Pines mystery  by Louise Penny, set in French-speaking Canada, featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.  I loved it; 4 1/2 stars from me.  I think this story was better than the first book, Still Life, our book club selection a few months ago

I loved the main characters who all seem flawed and seem to have complicated relationships with each other. For example, there is the underlying professional jealousy that the artist Peter has for his artist wife Clara.  He loves her yet he is jealous of her artistic talent and she is oblivious of his jealousy.  I am now trying to get the fourth book in the series, The Brutal Telling, and am wondering if this theme of jealousy  is going to be developed in this novel.

The main storyline is a murder that takes place in a "haunted house" at a seance but there is a secondary story also taking place. In  Fatal Grace, the second book, we learned that Gamache was having some difficulties relating to his job and may even have a spy on his investigating team.  In The Cruelest Month the specific difficulty is identified and there is a satisfactory resolution.
 
While I am waiting for The Brutal Telling, I am reading V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton.   Several issues are going on in this book.  A man accumulates gambling debts and is murdered by his loan shark.  Private Investigator Kinsey Millhone is hired by a lonely widower to find out if his shoplifting fiancee Audrey Vance, of whom he knows very little, committed suicide or if there was foul play.  Nora has a cheating husband and seems to be about to have a tryst with a loan shark and mobster named Dante.  At some point I think Dante, Nora, Kinsey and a newspaper reporter, Diane, who Kinsey detests, are going to connect.  I will find out as I read more tonight.