**Blog Tour ~ Murder by the Homeplace ~ William Leverne Smith**

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for 
The Homeplace Series by William Leverne Smith. 
My stop includes my review of Murder by the Homeplace.

Murder by the Homeplace is a novella (80 pages, 23,000 words) set in 1987 just following the conclusion of his 

well-received family saga, Back to the Homeplace.

******************************************

Murder by the Homeplace
by William Leverne Smith
Publisher: Vision to Action Publishing

Category: Historical Fiction, Family Saga, Mystery, Missouri Ozarks, General Fiction

Tour Dates: May, 2013

Available in Print and Kindle: April 2013

ISBN: 978-1469926650

From Back of the Book:

A police radio scanner call of '419' - "dead human body" - on a bucolic fall afternoon in the south-central Missouri Ozarks small town of Oak Springs sends a part-time local newspaper reporter, Penny Nixon, on the adventure of her life-time. Warned by her editor to only look for 'human-interest angles' to the story, her actions bring her perilously close to interviewing the knife-wielding perpetrator of a bizarre murder. The victim is a recently disgraced young attorney who only weeks earlier was involved in a domestic violence incident with his 'banker's daughter' bride in this quiet small town.

Novels in The Homeplace Series:

Back to the Homeplace

The Homeplace Revisited

******************************************

About the Author:

William Leverne Smith was born and raised on a Midwestern farm. A passion for family history and genealogy studies provides background for his writing.

He and his wife live in a cabin in the Missouri Ozarks.

***********************************************

My Review

Murder by the Homeplace is a novella in the Homeplace series. It can be read standalone which is how I read it. It is well written and held my interest with the mystery. However, I was never able to connect with the main character, Penny, and I felt this took away from my experience.

Murder by the Homeplace  is the story of the days following a murder in a small town and the investigation that ensues. Penny Nixon, our heroine, is a freelance, part-time journalist and photographer who pursues the story for the local paper - which her father happens to own. We follow Penny over the course of two weeks as she pursues her own investigation of the murder, interviewing law enforcement, as well as other people who had connections to the victim, while law enforcement conduct their own.

The story is told in a first person narrative, and I think this may be the reason for my disconnect with the characters. There's something about this style that doesn't always work for me. While the story was good and well written, I was never emotionally invested. So while I was interested enough in the mystery to keep reading, the story didn't move me. 

I will say that the Bevins family saga mentioned in this story and told in the other books in the series is very intriguing. I like the thought of a story told about a family who've owned and lived in the same spot for over a century. I also liked the authors ability to paint the characters in a realistic light. The people inhabiting Oak Springs seem like folks you'd see around town, if you were visiting. I sensed the personal ties the characters had for one another, but I didn't feel the tie myself.

Would I have been more engaged if I'd read the previous books in this series? Perhaps. And I will eventually check them out. Overall, I liked Murder by the Homeplace. I guess I prefer my stories to evoke more of an emotional response.

**I received an ecopy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review.