The Nature of the Beast

This is the 8^th Louise Penny book reviewed in the blog, and The Nature of the Beast is the first one that leaves me disappointed. I am a big fan of her writing and her cast of characters from Three Pines, a fictitious village near Montreal. The quality of her writing and the continued evolution of her main characters remained superior. My only problem was the plot – just too improbable to swallow. In this genre, we have to be willing to suspend reality to a certain degree. In my opinion, Penny stepped well over the line in this novel. In her story, a 9-year-old boy was murdered soon after he claimed to have discovered an immense gun hidden in the forest with a monster drawn on it. The boy was already known to have a wild fantasy life. He was one that often made wild claims, so he was seen as The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Then he was dead. Eventually, the massive gun was found with a hideous monster etched into it, “The Whore of Babylon.” It was supposed to be a specially designed missile launcher which had been commissioned by Sadam Hussein. Really? I finished the book, but even the resolution of this fantastical tale was less than satisfying – this effort was so unlike Penny. No one can hit it out of the park every time.