Friday, October 28, 2005

Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith

The second title in the "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series. Precious Ramotswe prepares for her upcoming marriage, helps a mother to solve the mystery of her son's disappearance and promotes her secretary to assistant detective.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which had a bit more structure than "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" (it had one overarching mystery for Mma Ramotswe to solve, with only one or two minor cases coming up in the midst of the main investigation), though that gave this book a bit less charm than the last one. That said, it has just the right amount of Mma Ramotswe's philosophical musings, and the author's evocative descriptions of Botswana and the Kalahari desert.

On a side note, the edition that I borrowed from the library read like an uncorrected proof - it was full of typos, missing words (can something be full of something that's not there but is supposed to be??) and other such things. I'm not sure what was more irritating - the lack of proofreading, or the fact that some previous reader had gone through the entire book and corrected every single mistake in pencil. Why do people write in library books?! It's so annoying.

Other books I've read by this author:
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Portuguese Irregular Verbs

PS I just heard an interview with Alexander McCall Smith on CBC Radio where he mentioned that he wrote half of this book while staying in Vancouver with his two sisters. Cool!

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