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I must be the only person who couldn't get on with No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, so my heart fell a bit when I saw this book. However, it's so totally different and I quite enjoyed it. True, there's not much depth or any particularly engaging character, but it was easy to dip into.
I would have liked to find out a little more what happened to the characters, and it didn't engage me enough to inspire me to go and buy the next book.
All in all a pleasant and non-challenging read!

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I think his publishers did Alexander McCall Smith a disservice when they published this book without some serious editing.

I agree it was probably much more successful as a daily column, but read in its entirety it rambles far too much.

But I love the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series so my expectations were rather high. What a disappointment Pat was after Mma Ramotswe!

I enjoyed Domenica and Bertie and it was a pleasant read, but I wouldn't be rushing out to buy more McCall Smiths if this was the only one of his I'd read.

I had a similar problem - have tried to read this book in the past before and given up halfway through, but I persevered this time! I think that perhaps it's best read a chapter a day, as it was originally published.

I totally agree about the characters too - I just found them all immensely annoying, except for Bertie and Domenica. And they kept doing stupid things that really wound me up - like leaving the Peploe? in that cupboard, or letting it be cleaned with paint-stripper - I mean, even I know enough not to do that! I did get quite frustrated... Caykon, comparing it to a soap is actually quite apt, I don't watch soaps either because all the characters are so stupid I end up wanting to throw things at the TV!

Having said that, I didn't hate the book and found some of it quite enjoyable (although I did skim-read a lot of the more annoying chapters). I think I would be interested in reading the sequels - not enough to buy them though!

Dare I ask what you would give it out of ten??!!

TBH I wanted a book that if I got distracted by DD I could pick up again without too much bother.

I do think there were far too many characters in it though.

I finally finished this book. But it was a struggle, not in the sense that is was a hard going deep read, but exactly the opposite. It seemed to lack substance, there was no developed plot line with subplots, just 110 short chapters that had you flitting between the lives of the characters. Just as something is getting your interest you find the story focussed on something totally differant. I couldnt connect with any of the characters I found them all very self absorbed and annoying. Some of the storyline was somewhat interesting I did like bertie, but he was a tiny fraction of the whole book.
Nothing seemed to actually happen I thought it would all come together at the end of the book, but it didn't.
To me the book felt like a long winded soap opera in edinburgh, that I found myself constantly checking how many pages I had left to get through it.

It was however easy to dip into with the short chapters and as I said there were some amusing parts. Maybe someone with a differant sense of humour may find it more enjoyable. Overall I think it was the style it was written that I really disliked, suited a newspaper like it was intended but not indepth and juicy enough for me as a book.

Sorry simpson please don't take this personally.

This is the book i've got to read, just finding the page.

simpson's choice: FSS by AMS

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