Linda L

This is my first time reading a Louise Penny book so I came to it with no preconceived expectations. Overall I found her to be quite good at writing, certainly a master of nuance, innuendo, and subtlety with this particular book. Maybe the subject/theme was a little esoteric, but still the characters were well drawn and interesting. I enjoyed the fact that so many of the characters were suspects of the murder, the perpetrator could have been anyone of several persons. The book is intelligently written, Ms. Penny did an excellent job of research on this story and provided a good eye into the world of art dealers and artists in general. My small quibble with this book comes from the fact that I have not read previous books in this series, and there is an abundance of references to, what I presume to be, the prior book in the series. The events in the previous book seemed to be critical to an underlying part of this book. I felt like I was not in on it because I did not read that book. There is an issue between Inspector Gamache and Inspector Beauvois that is directly related to what took place in the prior book. I realize that series books will usually relate back to previous books just to make a first time reader get a little history of the main characters but what happened in a prior book is often not a crux of the current story. Anyway, it's a small thing and might only bother me. I want to know more about what happened in the last book, so I will go out and buy the book. Hummm, maybe that is the point.