Frank H. (perryfran) reviewed on 8/30/2018 + 1182 more book reviews

This one was a little bit of a departure from the first three novels in the series in that most of the book takes place in the Manoir Bellechasse, an isolated lodge by a lake in Quebec, rather than in the quaint town of Three Pines. I have been slowly making my way through this series after seeing a piece about Louise Penny on the CBS Morning TV show several months ago.

Inspector Gamache and his wife are celebrating their anniversary at the lodge and as it turns out, a very dysfunctional family, the Finneys, are also there for a family reunion. The family is expecting one other brother to come to the reunion nicknamed Spot. Well it turns out that Spot is actually Peter Morrow, the artist from Three Pines. He shows up with his wife Clara into a very uncomfortable atmosphere of the very strange family who are actually the Morrows (Peter's mother remarried a Finney). Anyway, it's not long before a murder of one of the Morrow sisters (Julia) happens in a most unusual manner...a statue of the elder Morrow, Peter's father, falls and crushes her. So Gamache is back in his element trying to solve the crime. The how it was committed is the hardest because he and his crew are perplexed as to how anyone could topple the heavy statue. But in the end it becomes clear as Gamache wades through the clues.

Overall, I enjoyed this one but maybe not quite as much as the previous entries in the series. The Morrow family is so bizarre and hateful towards each other that it seems far-fetched that the family would do yearly reunions. One of the strangest is the youngest sister, Marianna, who has a child named Bean. Marianna has kept the sex of Bean a secret and no one knows whether Bean is a boy or girl. Peter also comes off as rather obnoxious especially when he was younger and full of jealousies towards his siblings. He also still seems jealous of Clara's art and her upcoming showing. Also, the eventual solution to the crime was kind of unsatisfying with the motivations seeming a little contrived.

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