There is some repetition and reiteration - OK-OK we get the Balm of Gilead reference already! Basically, I longed for the plot to step more lively, if you please. The artistic process and angst is discussed ad nauseum and is used as motive where it really doesn’t make sense. Much of the book is psychologically driven and I grew tired of Clara’s tormented artist self pity.

Penny’s novels, I find myself making a list of things to Google.īack to the story - this is a markedly more philosophical and somber novel which deliberately mirrors Gamache’s introspection since his retirement from the force. Part of the mystery also refers to a place in Scotland dubiously named “The Garden of Cosmic Speculation”, it really does exist and looks fascinating – check it out here.

This novel is fairly steeped in art – even the cover of the book feels and looks like a canvas. The mystery orbits around paintings of the beautiful landscape and Canadian artists. Lawrence river, which has attracted artists for centuries. This unlikely crew of investigators find themselves in the Canadian region of Charlevoix, a place of harsh beauty along the St. Clara and Gamache are joined by Reine-Marie, Myrna, the bookstore owner, his ex-Sargent De Beauvior, and the ever-cranky poet Ruth. He and his wife, Reine-Marie, are enjoying village life – breakfasts at the bistro, browsing at the bookstore, dinners with friends – when one of their friends, Clara, asks Gamache to help locate her estranged and now missing husband. The Long Way Home finds Chief Inspector Gamache now retired in Three Pines hoping to relax and recover from the horrors he experienced (yes you must read the earlier novels to truly understand the context). So I blissfully delved into The Long Way Home, the 10th in her series. I eagerly await each and every one of her novels. The characters have depth, humor and pathos and the plots are often intricately complex and psychological. The series largely focuses in and around the picturesque Canadian village of Three Pines, filled with idiosyncratic inhabitants - but these are no typical “cozy” mysteries.

Louise Penny is a former CBC journalist and her well-honed story telling craft makes each of her novels a gem. These (as with Deborah Crombie) shall and should be read in sequence ( Still Life is the first).

Here I am again, recommending another intelligent and well-written mystery series.

The long way home book louise penny