A Rule Against Murder (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #4)

by Louise Penny

‘What was it Oscar Wilde said?’ ‘I can resist everything except temptation.’

What killed people wasn’t a bullet, a blade, a fist to the face. What killed people was a feeling. Left too long. Sometimes in the cold, frozen. Sometimes buried and fetid. And sometimes on the shores of a lake, isolated. Left to grow old, and odd.

Chief Inspector Gamache knew one thing about hate. It bound you for ever to the person you hated. Murder wasn’t committed out of hate, it was done as a terrible act of freedom. To finally rid yourself of the burden.

You can’t get milk from a hardware store. So stop asking for something that can’t be given. And look for what is offered.

Grief was dagger shaped and sharp and pointed inwards. It was made of fresh loss and old sorrow. Rendered and forged and sometimes polished.

She taught me that life goes on, and that I had a choice. To lament what I no longer had or be grateful for what remained.