The Double Comfort Safari Club
Alexander McCall Smith
Little Brown, $39.99, hbk
Alexander McCall Smith gives the impression of writing a book a month - this is the 11th outing for the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, and he has two other series on the go as well.
This latest title is as simple in structure as the rest, with a small cast of characters (most of them familiar from the previous books) and easy-to-solve mysteries (Mma Ramotswe is more adept at problems of the heart than puzzles that involve dozens of clues).
These are written about with the wonderful wit, wisdom and warmth that are the hallmark of McCall Smith's style.
Four interwoven stories take up most of the book: an American lady has left money in her will to an unnamed guide at an unnamed safari camp (not the one in the title, incidentally, which doesn't appear to play any part in the story); there are suspicions of an affair; Mma Makutsi's fiance has a nasty accident and is taken over by an equally nasty aunt, and a woman who has appeared briefly in the other books tries to steal a whole house off her lover.
But the bulk of the book concerns the longstanding characters.
McCall Smith plays with them like a composer writing a series of variations on a theme.
You love them or you don't. I do.
- Michael Crowl is a Dunedin writer.
- The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency television show is on VIBE on Tuesdays at 9.30pm.
