Mini-Review
Black Water Lilies
by
Michel Bussi translated from the French by Shaun Whiteside.
This #crimenovel is
set in France in Giverny, the village in which Claude Monet painted until his
last. The crime is linked to this part of the village's history & it
was the main reason why I picked it up.
But! O' the
disappointment... I can't remember when I read a #detective fiction
driven by what I'd qualify as the most idiotic and cowardly inspector there is
in the history of my reading, and the novel is not even a comedy.
The story can be
divided into 3 parts:
1- a very good,
somewhat gripping first half if you excuse the caricatural charmer &
thoroughly lazy main character, Inspector Sérénac.
2- an abysmally
constructed and nonsensical turn into the events that will lead to the
resolution of the mystery.
3- the truth
revealed which is actually very good but has nothing to do with the first half.
It's not easy to play with time lines in a story, to go back & forth in time, and be there-and-not at the same time. This is why this novel ended up such a mess, this is a case of "Inception" gone wrong.
I am ranting but I did enjoy the first half, I wish someone would pick it & write the end, and that someone else would write the beginning of that very interesting last part. Two novels in one, none completed.
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