"No one liked CC de Poitiers -- not her family, not her lover, not her neighbors in Three Pines. When Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is called to investigate CC's sudden death on the day after Christmas, it seems like an impossible murder. How could she have been lectrocuted in the middle of a frozen lake in the midst of Three Pines annual curling match without anyone seeing a thing? In the beautiful but deadly Quebec winter, Gamache digs for secrets beneath the surface of village life. But something more chilling than the bitter wind is coming for him"--P. [4] of cover.

Sent to a village south of Montreal to investigate the death of CC de Poitiers, an extremely unpopular woman apparently killed in an electrical accident, Armand Gamache of the Surete du Quebec finds that nearly everyone in town had a motive to kill her.