Reviews: Carol, Chambers, Dicker, Francis, Hodgson, McGrath, Ridpath, Runcie, McCall Smith

Here are nine reviews which have been added to the Euro Crime website today, three have appeared on the blog since last time, and six are completely new.

NB. You can keep up to date with Euro Crime by following the blog and/or liking the Euro Crime Facebook page.

New Reviews

Michelle Peckham reviews Watch Me by James Carol, the second in his Jefferson Winter series set in the US;

Amanda Gillies reviews Kimberley Chambers' Payback, set in London's East End;

Laura Root reviews Joel Dicker's much talked about The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair tr. Sam Taylor;

Susan White reviews Felix Francis's Refusal which sees the return of Sid Halley;

Terry Halligan reviews the CWA Historical Dagger winning The Devil in the Marshalsea by Antonia Hodgson;

Michelle also reviews The Bone Seeker, the third in M J McGrath's Edie Kiglatuk series set in the Arctic;

Lynn Harvey reviews Michael Ridpath's Sea of Stone, the fourth and latest in his Icelandic series featuring Magnus Jonson;

Terry also reviews James Runcie's Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil the third in the series (and soon to be an ITV series)

and I review the audio book of Alexander McCall Smith's The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection read by Adjoa Andoh.


Previous reviews can be found in the review archive.

Forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, here along with releases by year.

Review: The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection by Alexander McCall Smith (audiobook)

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection by Alexander McCall Smith, read by Adjoa Andoh (ISIS Audio Books, 2012, MP3, ISBN: 978-1-4450-2069-3)

THE LIMPOPO ACADEMY OF PRIVATE DETECTION is the thirteenth in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series set in Botswana. The detective agency's proprietor is Mma Ramotswe who is ably helped by assistant detective Grace Mma Makutsi.

The previous book, dealt with Mma Makutsi's marriage to the wealthy Phuti Radiphuti and now the happy couple have to find a home. When Phuti sells a builder, Mr Putumelo, two sofas from his Double Comfort Furniture Store, he thinks he has found just the man to build their new house. However, when Mma Makutsi meets Mr Putumelo she is less than happy with his attitude to her and this is a sign of things to come...

Back at Speedy Motors, Fanwell, the second apprentice at Mr J L B Matekoni's (husband to Mma Ramotse) garage, gets himself into to trouble with the law by helping a friend and it's up to his employer and friends to see justice done.

And over at the Orphan Farm, the redoubtable Mma Potakwani, has been fired for disagreeing with a new proposal to build a shared dining room using the funds from a sizeable donation. She asks Mma Ramotswe to investigate one of the board members, Mr Ditso, who has pushed the board to accept the proposal.

Into all this comes a stranger from America, though he is well known to Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi as he is none other than Clovis Anderson, author of their touchstone guidebook, The Principles of Private Detection. Mr Anderson lends his advice and moral support to Mma Ramotswe's investigation of Mr Ditso and she in turn learns about Mr Anderson.

I was slightly disappointed with the previous book, THE SATURDAY BIG TENT WEDDING PARTY, due to the unsatisfactory resolution to Mma Ramotswe's case however there is no such problem here. And even though Mma Ramotse should not have needed Clovis Anderson's intervention, as the answer is obvious early on, it does not matter, as it is the act of being transported to Mma Ramotswe's Botswana and its gentle way of life which is the reason for reading these. The "crime element" is not as important as catching up with the characters' lives.

I actively seek out these audio books read by Adjoa Andoh. They are an absolute treat to listen to and beautifully done. I've finally tracked down an audiobook of the next book in the series, THE MINOR ADJUSTMENT BEAUTY SALON – a place which appears in LIMPOPO and which provides useful intel – and I can't wait to listen to it.

August 2014

New Reviews: Bale, Dunn, Hall, Jardine, Ridpath, Smith & a New Competition

It's March and here's a new competition plus reviews of 6 more books...

Win Carnage by Maxim Chattam (UK only).

Here are this week's reviews:

Maxine Clarke reviews the new Joe Clayton thriller from Tom Bale, Blood Falls, now out in paperback;

Terry Halligan reviews the twentieth appearance by Daisy Dalrymple in Carola Dunn's Gone West;

Coroner Jenny Cooper is back in M R Hall's The Flight reviewed here by Sarah Hilary;

Susan White reviews Quintin Jardine's new Primavera Blackstone adventure, As Easy as Murder;

Lynn Harvey supplies the third glowing review on Euro Crime for Michael Ridpath's 66 Degrees North the second in this series set in Iceland, now out in paperback

and fans of Alexander McCall Smith's Mma (Precious) Ramtoswe won't want to miss her first case Precious and the Monkeys which I reviewed last week on the blog.

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive.

Forthcoming titles can be found by author or date or by category, here and new titles by David Belbin, Fiona Buckley, N J Cooper, David Downing, Gillian Galbraith, Dolores Gordon-Smith, Tessa Harris, Cora Harrison, Veronica Heley, Diane Janes, Meurig Jones, Margaret Mayhew, Susanna Quinn, Jean Rowden, EV Seymour, John Gordon Sinclair and Simon Toyne have been added to these pages this week.

Review: Precious and the Monkeys by Alexander McCall Smith

Precious and the Monkeys by Alexander McCall Smith and illustrated by Iain McIntosh (Hardback, 73 pages, July 2011, Polygon, An Imprint of Birlinn Limited, ISBN: 1846972043)

Precious and the Monkeys was first published in the Scottish language as Precious and the Puggies
and I have to confess that, even though it's a children's book, I couldn't make head nor tale of it so I was very pleased when this English language version came out.

Precious and the Monkeys reveals how Precious (later Mma) Ramotse was inspired to become a detective and how the name of her business was devised, but it mainly details her first case as a young girl.

Still unsure how to pronounce Ramotswe? From Chapter One:

"That is an African name, and is not as hard to say as it looks. You just say RAM and then you say OTS (like lots without the l) and the you finish it off by saying WE. That's it."

The crime Precious has to investigate is who is stealing food from her classmates at school? Fingers are pointed at one of her fellow pupils but Precious insists that's there's no proof and that you really mustn't accuse someone without hard facts. Showing the kindly ways, readers of the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series are familiar with, she befriends the suspect and the solution is revealed and the culprit caught (though the cover and title do rather give it away).

The story, however, isn't a whodunnit but a morality tale, told by an avuncular narrator, with the hope of encouraging its young readers to behave considerately and thoughtfully. It is utterly charming and the illustrations are beautiful. A delightful book which is over all too soon.

This will be published in the US as The Great Cake Mystery: Precious Ramotswe's Very First Case, on 3 April.

Crime Writers contribute to Imagined Lives

A new exhibition opens at the National Portrait Gallery this week called Imagined Lives, the accompanying book has been available for a couple of weeks. The authors involved in this imagining of lives for unknown portrait subjects include crime writers John Banville (aka Benjamin Black), Alexander McCall Smith and Minette Walters as well as non-crime writers Tracy Chevalier, Julian "Downton Abbey" Fellowes, Terry Pratchett, Sarah Singleton and Joanna Trollope.

You can read an extract from False Mary (which is the cover on the book below) written by Alexander McCall Smith on the NPG website.

Eight internationally acclaimed authors have invented imaginary biographies and character sketches based on fourteen unidentified portraits. Who are these men and women, why were they painted, and why do they now find themselves in the Collection of the National Portrait Gallery? With fictional letters, diaries, mini-biographies and memoirs, Imagined Lives creates vivid stories about these unknown sitters from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Alexander McCall Smith - Short Story

I've been informed about a very short storym written by Alexander McCall Smith, about what happens to people who complain about their hotel rooms. The story was written exclusively for Jumeirah Magazine (a publication by Jumeirah Hotels and Resorts).

Click on the title to read The Badly-Behaved Guest.

App for Alexander McCall Smith

I posted last year about a couple of Apps for Martina Cole and Mark Billingham and I keep seeing one for Alexander McCall Smith being advertised on posters at train stations:

This is Alexander McCall Smith's official iPhone app. It features exclusive video of the author discussing key characters in the series and locations throughout the country of Botswana. You can also read sample chapters from the books in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, including an exclusive preview chapter from The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party. And find out about 20 of Alexander's favourite songs. Look out for further updates this year.

(taken from AppShopper)

Review: The Double Comfort Safari Club by Alexander McCall Smith (audiobook)

The Double Comfort Safari Club by Alexander McCall Smith, read by Adjoa Andoh (ISIS Audio Books, 2010, CD ISBN:978-0-7531-2794-0)

The Double Comfort Safari Club is the eleventh in the Botswanan Mma Ramotswe series. Mma Ramotswe's No.1 Ladies Detective Agency has a couple of cases to solve; a friend of Mma Ramotswe thinks her husband is having an affair and a letter from America sends Mma Ramotswe and Assistant Detective Mma Makutsi out into the Okavango Delta (but not until disk 6 out of 7), and of course, Mma Makutsi's enemy Violet Sephotho is up to no good.

But this series isn't about detection really, it's about love and kindness, family and tea. Where everyone in Botswana is connected through tenuous family links (by Western eyes) and favours are willingly done and repaid.

There is much pleasure to be gained from Mma Ramotswe's observations, such as this when meeting a man in a bright blue shirt, who may be having an affair:

"She knew the warning signs with middle-aged men - they were like a set of traffic lights that glowed brightly in the dark. Greater attention to grooming? Bad sign. Pulling-in of the stomach to conceal paunch? Bad sign. Purchase of a more powerful car in bright red? Very, very bad sign."

And there is a hilarious trip on the river later on for Mma Ramoswe and Mma Makutsi, and in contrast there is also a poignant explanation as to why relatives who have died are referred to as late, rather than dead.

The Double Comfort Safari Club is a feel-good read which is wonderfully performed by Adjoa Andoh. Adjoa Andoh has narrated the latest four in the series and at least according to amazon will be doing the next in the series, The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, out in March 2011.

New Reviews: Egeland, Gregorio, MacBride, McDermid, Millar, Rankin, Smith

There are two competitions running in September. One is for 2 children's adventure-thriller books by Andy Briggs and is open to the UK, and the other is for A Visible Darkness by Michael Gregorio (reviewed below) which is open world-wide. Details on how to enter can be found on the competition page.

Here are this week's reviews:

Amanda Gillies reviews The Guardians of the Covenant by Tom Egeland concluding with "[it] should keep you hooked from cover to cover";

Norman Price reviews this month's competition prize, A Visible Darkness by Michael Gregorio;

Paul Blackburn reviews the futuristic crime novel Halfhead by Stuart B MacBride;

Maxine Clarke reviews the newest in the Tony Hill series by Val McDermid - Fever of the Bone - beginning her review by writing that "it is written with multi award-winning Val McDermid's usual professionalism, dependability, style and apparent effortlessness";

Michelle Peckham reviews Sam Millar's The Dark Place;

Pat Austin has no complaints about Ian Rankin's The Complaints

and I recently reviewed (on this blog), the audio book version of The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith.

Previous reviews can be found in the review archive and forthcoming titles can be found here.

Review: The Miracle at Speedy Motors (audio book)

The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith, read by Adjoa Andoh
(ISIS Audio Books, June 2008, CD ISBN:075312792X)

The Miracle at Speedy Motors is the ninth in the Mma Ramotswe, owner of Botswana's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, series. This time around Mma Ramotswe has the problem of who is sending her anonymous spiteful letters as well as tracking down the family of an orphan whilst associate detective, Mma Makutsi's problems are more domestic.

As usual this was a delightful listen, taking the listener straight into Botswanan culture and how people there are linked together; a story of family, friends and a country, hung over a framework of problems to solve. In the main, all ends happily though the author doesn't take the easy route with a matter concerning Mma Ramotswe's family.

I enjoy this series more with each passing book and have already ordered the next one, Tea Time for the Traditionally Built.

Adjoa Andoh has recently taken over the narration duties from Hilary Neville. Whereas the latter had a subtle way of distinguishing between the characters speaking, the former gives the characters much more easily identifiable voices. And, whether this is coincidence or not, to my ear her Mma Ramotswe does sound quite similar to the tv version of Mma Ramotswe played by Jill Scott.

(Adjoa Andoh is of course well known to Doctor Who fans as Martha's mother.)

The Euro Crime bibliography page for Alexander McCall Smith is here.

What's in a title?

The curse of the pesky title change strikes again:

The new Isabel Dalhousie from Alexander McCall Smith is out in September in the US as The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday and will appear in the UK in October as The Comfort of Saturdays:













The second in the Burren series from Cora Harrison was published in May in the UK as Michaelmas Tribute but will appear in the US in September as A Secret and Unlawful Killing (which seems a bizarre name to me when you think about it...)

New standalone novel from Alexander McCall Smith

A tip-off from Birlinn's newsletter:

This Christmas Alexander McCall Smith will venture outside 44 Scotland Street with a brand-new stand-alone book for Polygon, La’s Orchestra Saves the World. A stand-alone book from McCall Smith is a rare and exciting thing, and Polygon is delighted to be given this chance to publish it.

Set in the sleepy town of Suffolk, 1939, the widow La forms an amateur orchestra to entertain the locals, and hold back the growing shadow of despair as the war takes hold. The distraction helps to soothe her own broken heart and a touching friendship is formed between her and a refugee from Poland. This is another gem not to be missed from one of Britain’s most popular writers.

La’s Orchestra Saves the World is due to be published in November 2008.

More No.1 Ladies Detective Agency episodes on tv

I've seen the trailer for the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency film that's going to be on the BBC over Easter (Monday I think). I can't find a version online yet. But I did find that there are plans for a further 13 hour-long episodes. From Hollywood.com:

HBO has retained the services of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

The cable network has ordered 13 hour-long episodes based on the best-selling crime books by Alexander McCall Smith, with shooting to begin in the summer. That's in addition to the two-hour pilot that Anthony Minghella recently shot in Botswana from a script he wrote with Richard Curtis.

Agency stars R&B singer Jill Scott as Precious Ramotswe, the proprietor of the only female-owned detective agency in the southern African nation. Anika Noni Rose plays her quirky secretary, Mma Makutsi, and Lucian Msamati stars as Ramotswe's devoted suitor, JLB Matekoni.

HBO has secured U.S. and Canadian television and home video rights, and the BBC has taken U.K. television distribution.

UPDATE: Trailer and two clips are on line.

Radio 4 - the Smiths: Tom Rob and Alexander McCall

On Radio 4's Front Row this week, a couple of crime fiction highlights which you can listen to online for a few more days by clicking on the dates below:

Monday 25th February

Child 44
Mark Lawson talks to British crime writer Tom Rob Smith, whose novel Child 44 has been hyped as Gorky Park for the 21st century in its portrayal of a Russian policeman searching for a child serial killer in modern Moscow.

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith is published by Simon and Schuster.


Thursday 28th February

Alexander McCall Smith
The creator of the bestselling Number 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Alexander McCall Smith joins John Wilson to talk about the latest adventures of Botswana's 'foremost solver of problems', Precious Ramotswe, and to discuss a new adaptation of the novels, directed by Anthony Minghella.

The Miracle at Speedy Motors, by Alexander McCall Smith, is out in March.
The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency will be shown on BBC1 at Easter.

Easter date with Mma Ramotswe

The Birlinn newsletter gives the transmission date for The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency tv film:

Screening of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency movie based the novel by Alexander McCall Smith has been set for Easter Monday, 24 March 2008.

The movie was filmed in Botswana last summer directed by Anthony Minghella, producer of the hugely successful film of Michael Ondaajte’s novel The English Patient.

The role of ‘traditionally built’ Mma Ramotswe is played by double Grammy winning jazz and blues singer, Jill Scott, and the screenplay has been written by Richard Curtis, best known for Four Weddings and Funeral, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’s Diary, together with Anthony Minghella.

Publishing News print edition - free online this week

Because of the postal strike, the latest print edition of Publishing News is available to download as a .pdf. NB. It's 7MB.

A couple of snippets I extracted:

Nick Sayers has bought a further trio of historical novels by Robyn Young, author of Brethren and Crusade. Requiem, which concludes that trilogy, is scheduled for 2009. The new books will form the Insurrection trilogy, and the action is set in 13th century Scotland, England and France. Sayers bought from the eponymous Rupert Heath.

and

The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is to feature on TV, on BBC over Christmas, directed by Anthony Minghella, no less, from a script co-written with Richard Curtis. Abacus releases the tie-in edition on 6 December, and it should provide yet another sales bonanza for the entire series in book and audio form.