The Murder Stone - Louise Penny

Beneath a scorched summer sky, the wealthy Finney family have gathered at a lakeside manor to honour their late father. But when the heat wave boils over into a mighty storm, a dead body is left in it's wake - Chief Inspector Armand Gamache finds himself with a building full of suspects.






Published by:Sphere - Headline Book Company - Fiction
Year: 2009 - Paperback
Pages: 424
ISBN: 978-0-7515-4753-5

The Finney family have gathered at the Manoir Bellachasse for their annual reunion but this year will be a little different. This year they are going to erect a statue in memory of their father Charles.  Following the celebrations a big storm hits and in it's wake one of their family will be found dead, murdered but why.

Louise Penny has written a series of novels involving her main character Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. 'The Murder Stone' is number 4 in the series and number 23 off my yet to be read bookshelf..   When I picked up this book I thought it was going to be a really good read. I even looked at downloading other novels in the series to my Kindle.  Unfortunately I was to be left disappointed.  It is a crime thriller but took until page 112 before a crime was committed and took the remaining 312 pages to discover who had committed the murder which seemed to be quickly resolved within the last two chapters.  For me there appeared to be a lot of what I would describe as padding out in order to make a novel and could of been a lot shorter than it's 424 pages.  

I know Ms Penny has a huge following for her novels but I don't think I will be including myself in that group. It was definitely a novel that I had to keep reading but not necessarily for the right reasons. In my case it was in the hope that it something would happen soon and that the novel would move up a pace but in the end it was more that I was left wanting to get to the end as soon as possible in order to move onto something else.

Happy reading one and all

Mx.