Tuesday, September 30, 2014

The Long Way Home

Title: The Long Way Home
Author: Louise Penny
Series: Inspector Gamache, book 10
Genre: Mystery
Published: 2014
Rating: 7/10

Review: The Long Way Home is the only novel I managed to finish in the last month. I've been busy and stressed, and this is the only book I found sufficiently compelling to pick up. I enjoyed returning to the village of Three Pines and the series' characters.

Armand Gamache has retired and moved to Three Pines with his wife to mend after the events of the previous books. Things are comfortable and quiet. However, Gamache takes on a task of looking for Peter, Clara's husband, who hasn't returned home on the arranged date and that leads them far into Canadian wilderness.

The beginning of this novel was downright slow. I like the cozy aspect of Penny's novels and her focus on characterization and the characters' inner lives, but she went a bit overboard here and spent way too much time on the description of Gamache's life in Three Pines. Very little happens in the first half of the book and quite a bit happens in the last two chapters, so it all feels a bit rushed at the end.

The resolution was not at all what I was expecting, though I have figured out the villain in this book ahead of time. It also left me wondering where Penny is planning to take the series, the book didn't really seem like the start of a bigger arch, the way previous books were. Feeling slightly underwhelmed, even though I've enjoyed reading the book.