Book Notices | The Handsome Man's De Luxe Café by Alexander McCall Smith / Allegiant by Veronica Roth / Homicidal by Paul Alexander

Alexander McCall Smith, The Handsome Man's De Luxe Café

Amazon   I haven't yet read the last couple of books in this series: while I was off doing other things Mma Makutsi changed her title and had a baby--pretty big doings. Still, time moves slowly in McCall Smith's Botswana, and one is able to jump into his books out of order without missing too much. This time out, Mma Ramotswe is asked to discover the identity of a woman with amnesia. She also concerns herself with the future of Charlie, her husband's girl-chasing apprentice mechanic. Meanwhile, Mma Makutsi is wading more fully into entrepreneurship by opening the café of the book's title: things don't quite go as planned. As always, it's a delight to spend some time in the company of Mma Ramotswe and her people. McCall Smith's writing is a simple joy, in the way that watching dust motes waft lazily in a shaft of summer sunlight is a joy. Life should have more such moments. And more such books. Fortunately, Mr. McCall Smith is a most prolific author.

Veronica Roth, Allegiant

Amazon   I have finally finished this trilogy! This last one was sitting around a long time before I picked it up. It's not that there's anything wrong with it. I just never particularly cared about the characters, particularly the second-tier ones, and so I would completely forget what was going on between books. It was difficult to work up the enthusiasm, therefore, to open a new one. My twelve-year-old loved the books, though, and the movie, which I've yet to see.

Paul Alexander, Homicidal

Amazon   I really wasn't impressed with this Kindle Single. Singles are supposed to be "compelling ideas expressed at their natural length." This is a good description, and in my experience Singles do tend to be well told stories, whether they're fiction or nonfiction. Alexander's account of a string of murders in Los Angeles, the work of the so-called Grim Sleeper, starts well, with the arrest of the killer while his shocked neighbors look on. But it quickly becomes a string of repetitious descriptions of murders, with names of the dead and of law enforcement officers blending together. I have no idea how many murders were committed, or whether all of the murders mentioned in the book were the work of the one killer. The author hasn't honed his story into a readable whole. Worse than that, it comes as a shock in the last couple chapters when you realize that the man arrested for the crimes has yet to go on trial! The author never spells this out. His verbs just suddenly change to the future tense when he's talking about the trial. Failing to make the status of the case perfectly clear to the reader is, I think, really unforgivable.