Wednesday 14 October 2015

The Murder Stone by Louise Penny

When I decided to do the Canadian book challenge, I knew I had at least two Canadian books in my posession. This book wasn't one of them! 
I didn't know anything about this book, had never heard of the author and it was published in the UK, so I didn't give it much thought. 

Imagine my surprise, when I started reading it! Here is Inspector Gamache, on vacation in an auberge in Quebec! Wondering why it was set in Quebec (my province, go figure!), sent me on a searh to see if the places within the book really existed. Then I was left wondering about the author, why would she set this in Quebec, was she Canadian as well? She is indeed! Born in Toronto, living in Quebec. How awesome is that?!?! 

Not only is this a great read, but I can add the book to the challenge!

What I enjoyed about this story is that while it's part of a series, you're given enough information about the characters, that it's not necessary to have read all the previous books to get an understanding of who they are. 

The only mystery that went unsolved, was "what is Bean?". As I went searching through the web looking up information about the author to see if she was Canadian, I visited her website. There, in the FAQ, I found a question asking about Bean's gender. To which the reply was, that the author never gave Bean a gender. 
Had I not come across this question, it would have never occured to me that Bean was genderless. It doesn't make a difference really, but to me, Bean had always been a boy. I ended up backtracking to the point where Bean was first mentioned, just to check if Bean really hadn't been introduced as a boy. Nope, seems my brain finished off Bean's intro on its own!

Some aspects of the book were predictable. Namely, the person who gets murdered. I also had my own suspects for the murderer. The true murderer ended up being one of my suspects but for a completely different reason. 

Overall, it was a very fun read, quite the page turner and I'm looking forward to reading more books from Louise Penny. 

This book is also published under the title: A Rule Against Murder (in Canada and the USA - I have the UK published version, so I went with that title)