Linda's Reviews > The Long Way Home

3.5
I have been having trouble sleeping lately and hoped an audio bedtime story might be the cure. I decided on Louise Penny. It has been over a year since I listened to her previous work. Yet, the familiar characters, setting, and excellent narrator, Ralph Cosham, worked like comfort food or, more aptly, melatonin.

In A Long Way Home, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his wife, Reine-Marie, retired to the village of Three Pines. However, his respite is interrupted by his old friend, artist Clara Morrow, whose husband, artist Peter Morrow, is missing. Gamache, his son-in-law, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, who works as an inspector at the Suerte de Quebec Clara, and her close friend Myrna, a psychiatrist, engage in a search for Peter that is both psychological and physical.

Penny typically intertwines character study with mystery. The search for Peter also examines artists' nature and the art world's eccentricities. Her account of the characters' search along the St Lawrence River is a bonus. Her vibrant descriptions of the Quebec countryside made me want to visit and explore the region.

I enjoyed the book; however, the ending was too melodramatic. Still, I would recommend the novel. It is a clever mystery and a great bedtime story.