I’ve got a strange kind of cold this week — it doesn’t seem to get better or get worse, but just remains at a stage of me feeling slightly cruddy, so I’m picking books to read that go down easily. I’m not up for reading anything challenging.
I bought this book in 2005 and then didn’t read it. I’ve read the previous books in the series, but I guess I just decided that I’d read enough of these books? And then bought one more anyway, but never read it. But now I’ve brewed a cup of bush tea, so let’s go.
(I think I started drinking that stuff after I read the first book in this series?)
I think that people should write stories featuring whatever people they want to dream up. But it’s sometimes hard to completely disregard the paternalistic tone the white author here takes with his African characters. It’s often like… “eeeh?” (Such erudite critique.)
But this book sure goes down easy. We’re presented a number of low stakes mysteries, and most of them are solved. I tend to think that the author has a tendency to forget all the plot strands?
As is alluded to in this review of the next book in the series.
I did indeed enjoy reading this book while hacking slightly, but I don’t feel compelled to buy any further entries in this series. I see that there’s now 24 or these books? Geezes. Perhaps reading one of these books every 20 years is enough?
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (2004) by Alexander McCall Smith (buy used, 4.09 on Goodreads)