My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This latest outing isn't as good as the previous one.
The best part of the series is when you open the book you find yourself instantly transported back to Botswana like there's a hole in the floor you fall through. Nothing else around you registers and you lose track of your physical body. That's good writing, and why I have stuck through 14 books in the series, and will continue.
This being said, McCall Smith could use an editor. This volume clocks in at almost 500 pages, although I will say I read it easily in a day or so. The problem is I kept getting distracted and pulled out of the book by Mma R's ramblings, I really felt a few should have been cut to tighten the story. For example, while on the way to interview a suspect Mma R will wax philosophical about the meaning of life and the place of the creator for two pages. I know she does this often, and I appreciate the ruminations on the Botswana of the past and her father's cattle, but in this volume it's really overdone.
The two mysteries in the book, I enjoyed them, but not really on the level I had enjoyed others. I found I didn't care enough about the people involved. Also the mysteries were solved at the end, but we never got to see the resolutions play out, which I found disappointing.
Finally, I had brushed it out of my head that they had met Clovis Anderson as I found it too far fetched, so I didn't really like that this was brought up again. Also more of the talking shoes, which I don't love, and I don't remember it ever being said before that the #1 agency wasn't profitable? I didn't like that.
Still some time spent in Botswana is always welcome and I enjoyed the series continuing.
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