Latest McCall Smith: The Great Hippopotamus Hotel

Over the last few years, I have been reading all the books in Alexander McCall Smith's series, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. 

I got caught up last fall. 

This past month, I read the latest: The Great Hippopotamus Hotel. 

I am astonished, all over again, that McCall Smith can resist the pull of "after so many books/episodes, I must get melodramatic!" 

Television shows suffer from this assumption all the time. Even Bones, which was better than most, gave us Pelant arc. *Sigh.*

McCall Smith, without being repetitious (though, in fairness, there are only so many crimes to go around), gives us human beings who go on living their everyday lives while dealing with the related vagaries and oddities and unexpectedness and mundaneness. There are the mysteries, of course, but the interactions are ones that we can all relate to. Dorothy Sayers, I believe, once remarked that any gathering of people can find common ground in a discussion about plumbing. With McCall Smith, one such discussion involves men and their socks! 

There is also a hint of magical realism, which terms often makes me roll my eyes since it seems like an intellectual euphemism for "fantasy." But in McCall Smith's series, the enchantment of the country--to its characters, to its visitors--lays over everything. Magic is not unexpected, as with Mma Makutsi's talking shoes.

And the writing is very funny in a gentle, calm way that almost creeps up on the reader.  So, regarding those shoes and the small man who wants a sports car (but isn't going to tell his wife)--

What shoes allied to the female cause--as most ladies' shoes are--would remain silent in the face of the arrival at the garage of Mr. Mo Mo Malala, unashamedly planning to deceive his wife over the not unconsiderable matter of a small but high-powered Italian sports car. 

Every book is a delight!