From Louise Penny’s third Chief Inspector Gamache novel, The Cruelest Month:
p. 79
Gamache loved to see inside the homes of people involved in a case. To look at the choices they made for their most intimate space. The colors, the decorations. The aromas. Were there books? What sort?
How did it feel?
He had been in shacks in the middle of nowhere, carpets worn, upholstery torn, wallpaper peeling off. But stepping in he also noticed the smell of fresh coffee and bread. Walls were taken up with immense smiling graduation photos and on rusty pocked TV trays stood modest chipped vases with cheery daffodils or pussy willows or some tiny wildflower picked by worn hands for eyes that would adore it.
And he’d been in mansions that felt like mausoleums.
p. 80
Grief sometimes took time to tell. The first days for relatives or close friends of murder victims were blessedly numb. They almost always held together, going through the motions of a normal life, so that a casual observer would never know disaster had just rammed into them. Most people fell to pieces gradually, like the old Hadley house.
Nerdishly 
Thank you for introducing me to Louise Penny and the Inspector Gamache series… what a delightful read! I shy away from mysteries … don’t like to be scared ;). But these read so well and the characters are a treat! ( and the FOOD!) haha!
Thanks again… I’m on the fourth book and going strong.
And for the record this is the second genre you’ve introduced me to— sci fi was the first …. Enders Game is legendary in my family!
Love your book reviews and lists!
Fondly
Ashley
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Thank you for writing, Ashley! The Gamache series really is delightful, and, yes, the characters are wonderfully drawn. I have finished three but must meet a few of my 2019 reading goals before treating myself to the fourth. 😉
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