No one liked CC de Poitiers. Not her quiet, ineffectual husband. Not the pallid, spineless photographer she'd been cheating on him with. Not even her tremendously fat, silent eleven-year-old daughter Crie, dubbed "Brie" by her hateful classmates. And certainly none of the residents of Three Pines, a tiny village south of Montreal, each of whom CC had recently managed to offend with one callous and insensitive act or another. And therein lies the challenge for the brilliant inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Quebec, called once again from his headquarters in Montreal to investigate murder in this breathtaking hamlet. CC has been literally cooked alive in an apparent electrical accident on a local frozen lake, and everyone in town has a motive, even the inspector's good friends. The kind, compassionate, and whip-smart detective must employ all his talents, not least his ability to blend seamlessly into small-town life, to identify the calculating killer lurking within the pastoral landscape that is Three Pines.