Book Review – Black Water Lilies

I knew very little about Claude Monet’s life prior to reading this book other than I loved his water lily paintings.  The setting for this book is Giverny, France which was not only Monet’s home but also where he painted his famous waterlilies.  Until I read this book, I didn’t realize that he created the Japanese garden at his home in Giverny and painted all his waterlilies there.  Each year tourists flock there to see the famous gardens and some of his paintings.

The story begins with a body, Jerome Morval, being found in Monet’s gardens.  He has been murdered and the new police inspector, Laurenc Serenac, is on the case.  At first this seems to be a rather methodical, but quite boring mystery.  At times I was tempted to DNF it but because I had really looked forward to purchasing it, I carried on until I finished.  About 85% of the way through I was sure that I was going to end up rating it two stars, however, very close to the end of the book, there is a twist.  A marvelous twist that I did not see coming – my respect to the author for being able to pull this story line off.  I did increase my rating to three stars due to the twist, however, I did find that the story moved very slowly and I easily became distracted by other books simply because this story did not keep my attention for long.