cover image
LATEST ISSUE OF
Kirkus Reviews
Check out our interview with Rick Yancey, author of the wildly entertaining YA thriller The 5th Wave.
Kirkus Star
THE KIRKUS STAR
Awarded to Books of Exceptional Merit

BROWSE BOOK REVIEWS



Alexander McCall Smith (page 2)

Cover art for FRIENDS, LOVERS, CHOCOLATE
FICTION
Released: Sept. 20, 2005
Kirkus Star FRIENDS, LOVERS, CHOCOLATE
by Alexander McCall Smith
"Beneath the slender mystery is a celebration of Isabel's fallible but resolutely ethical approach to life, charming and light but with a refreshingly unapologetic gravitas."
Gently starchy Edinburgh ethicist Isabel Dalhousie (The Sunday Philosophy Club, 2004) slips into another sedate but vexing mystery. Read full book review >
Cover art for 44 SCOTLAND STREET
FICTION
Released: June 14, 2005
Kirkus Star 44 SCOTLAND STREET
translated by Alexander McCall Smith
"And who else would trouble to inform us that "The Emperor Justinian, . . . believed that homosexuality caused earthquakes"? Sheer readerly bliss."
The lives, loves and (numerous) eccentricities of the residents of an Edinburgh boardinghouse. Read full book review >
Cover art for IN THE COMPANY OF CHEERFUL LADIES
FICTION
Released: April 19, 2005
Kirkus Star IN THE COMPANY OF CHEERFUL LADIES
by Alexander McCall Smith
"Smith maintains the most civilized standards in the annals of detective fiction. But now, for the first time, he plots as if he actually means it."
The finest hour yet for Botswana's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, which is tracking a defalcating Zambian financier even though it "preferred to deal with more domestic matters." Read full book review >
Cover art for AT THE VILLA OF REDUCED CIRCUMSTANCES
FICTION
Released: Jan. 4, 2005
AT THE VILLA OF REDUCED CIRCUMSTANCES
by Alexander McCall Smith, illustrated by Iain McIntosh
"Though the first story is piffle, the second is a worthy apotheosis for Smith's charmingly clueless pedagogue. (Illus. throughout with b&w block prints)"
Smith completes the saga of Prof. Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld (see below) with a pair of long stories that transport him to Cambridge University and a faded Colombia salon. Read full book review >
Cover art for THE SUNDAY PHILOSOPHY CLUB
FICTION
Released: Sept. 28, 2004
THE SUNDAY PHILOSOPHY CLUB
by Alexander McCall Smith

Smith puts the chronicles of Botswana's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency on hold to explore an equally civilized Edinburgh criminal scene that Ian Rankin's DI John Rebus would never recognize. Read full book review >
Cover art for THE KALAHARI TYPING SCHOOL FOR MEN
FICTION
Released: April 29, 2003
THE KALAHARI TYPING SCHOOL FOR MEN
by Alexander McCall Smith
"Readers who haven't yet discovered Mma Ramotswe will enjoy discovering how her quiet humor, understated observation, and resolutely domestic approach to detection promise to put Botswana on the sleuthing map for good."
It's a good thing that Precious Ramotswe (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, 2001, etc.) has consolidated the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in anticipation of consolidating her personal life—moving its headquarters back of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, the establishment owned by Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, her fiancé—because the not-so-mean streets of Gaborone are teeming with problems only she can solve. Mr. Molofelo, a prosperous civil engineer from Lobatse, throws himself on her as a confessor, then asks her to find two women he wronged when he was a young man years ago: Tebogo Bathopi, the nursing student whom he insisted have the abortion he made necessary, and Mma Tsolamosese, the landlady whose radio he stole in order to finance the abortion. Read full book review >