Revenge as Motive - Believable?

I'm coming to the end of two mystery books which have left me kind of cold and I'm guessing it's because the motives just don't add up for me. It's beyond my comprehension that a person can hold a grudge for  30 or 40 years - all that wasted energy! I just want to shake people who can't move on, get over and grow up (probably why my mom discouraged my youthful desire to be a psychiatrist).

So many of my customers have discovered Louise Penny that I felt I had to give her a go but perhaps I just chose the wrong title to begin the Three Pines series with. I've been listening to A Rule Against Murder featuring a great character in Armand Gamache, chief of Quebec's Surete, a cross between Hercule Poirot and my more sensitive favorite, Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti. The joy of listening to these novels is to hear the reader, in this case with all the lovely French thrown in and in Leon's case, the Italian. The problem with this particular novel is having to live with the despicable Morrow family for the entire book.

I must tell you that this series has been getting rave reviews so it may be unfair for me to judge it on one book. I may have to go back and read a different one. My patience with dysfunctional families is notoriously limited and having to spend my time in the car with the Morrows was trying - especially since they were the red herring anyway. I'll say no more so as not to be a spoiler.
Suffice it to say, the plot revolves around a family reunion at Gamache's vacation spot, the isolated, peaceful Manoir Bellechasse, where he and his wife celebrate their wedding anniversary. This year though, their peace is marred by the tension in the air as the Morrow siblings tear each other to shreds with verbal abuse and a constant rehashing of past resentments. When one of them is found crushed to death under a statue of her father, Gamache goes to work and Freud must roll over in his grave at the symbolism!

As soon as I brave the cold and head out for my walk I'll finish up listening to Stella Rimington's Secret Asset, another book whose premise revolves around family issues and long held anger as catalyst for outrageous pay back. As I've written in the past, I'm a sucker for espionage in all its incarnations, so I love getting the insider info from Rimington who was, in fact, head of secret intelligence in Great Britain. Her alter-ego, Liz Carlyle, has been advised to route out a mole in the organization and, if you know MI-5, no one can trust anyone and the majority of bad guys seem to come from MI-6 rather than from the outside. Amazing how they get through the vetting process, isn't it?

Or maybe not when you consider what happened to the CIA last week, the devastating loss they suffered at the hands of an alleged triple agent from Jordan, a country that's actually supposed to like us. It seems that all the psychological training in the world can't always help identify the misguided anger that seeths below the surface of our fellow human beings. That's not to say that it isn't understandable, this doctor had apparently been treating victims of some very horrific violence in Pakistan. I know it's not simple but if only this kind of zealousness could be turned good............what a world we could inhabit!