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Books like The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection

This book is like going out to tea with a couple of great aunts who always give you a cheque as a present. The pair of them sit there reminiscing about old times and their old friends. And you sit there, taking tea with them, nibbling the fairy cakes, smiling and nodding in all the right places to the stories you've heard year after year. After tea, they rise to leave and as you kiss their papery cheeks goodbye, one of them presses a generous cheque into your hand, the pay-off. Only this time, it's just a neatly-folded $10 note.There was no overarching plot, only lots of little stories all of which got sorted out right before the end in a very self-satisfied way. The characters come straight from an afternoon soap opera. The arch-villain Violet Sephoto naturally makes an appearance, although this time it is a small one, thanks for small mercies. The new villains are ridiculously sterotypical, the shyster with stolen vehicles is slick, the stupid lawyer bumbles, the corrupt businessman works off money is power and all contracts belong to him, Mma Makutsi continues to go on about her 97% certificate and her shoes continue to talk back to her. There is nothing inventive or interesting here. The book reads like it was written to a formula by someone else who has been told by McCall Smith to concentrate on the details, that it is charm that is of the essence.Sadly, it seems that McCall Smith has fallen victim to his own success and does not want to stray from the formula that propels his books into money-making bestsellers. This is supposed to be the last book in the series, but the title of it refers to something that might happen in the future and is not a present feature in Mma Ramotswe's universe. Is there to be a new series based around the Limpopo Academy of Private Detection starring Mma Makutsi and Clovis Anderson, author of "The Principles of Private Detection" in major roles? Do we care?Notes as I read the bookThis is getting so tedious I could scream. I've just endured a whole chapter on how many cups of tea Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi drink in a week. Morning, office, lunch, afternoon, evening, day, weekend, each has to be totted up separately finally arriving at a year's total. And the totting up is done as if by a child to whom adding up is a something that is a major skill and each step to be gone through slowly, just in case something goes wrong... *** I couldn't give a fuck ***Where is the story, where is the plot? These have been utterly abandoned for what McCall Smith must consider "charming" detail. It's all fluff and no substance whatsoever.This is getting worse. A whole chapter on donkeys pulling Mma Ramotswe's van out of the sand. Tedious is a euphemism. Why am I torturing myself? Is it the fascination of a train wreck in slow motion?

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