by Penelope Gilbertson

Finding a favourite book series or two is sort of like having a television show that you can’t wait to see - you love the characters and the setting, and want the story to live on forever. Here are some of my favourite book series:

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
by Alexander McCall Smith
Bestselling author Alexander McCall Smith was born in what is now Zimbabwe and was educated there and in Scotland. It takes a while to stop thinking of the writer as a woman, he has an incredible “woman’s voice”. He has written ten books in the series, the most recent Tea Time for the Traditionally Built which came out at the end April 2009.

Reading these books is like taking a trip to beautifully described Botswana. The pleasure of being in Africa can only be topped by the charming and cunning Mma Ramotswe. There
is an old-fashioned innocence to these novels.
Mma Ramotswe has a love of her country, a
moralistic view of life, and desire to hold on to
the traditional values of her people. She is proud to be “traditionally built” meaning large - a good shake up to our attitudes in North America.

Mma Ramotswe opens her own detective agency in book one - The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, the only ladies detective agency in Botswana, with money from the sale of her father’s large herd of cattle, which he built up through hard work and intelligent choices. It is a delight to read the clever ways Mma Ramotswe finds to resolve the issues before her.

This doesn’t read like a mystery in the traditional
sense, although it is categorized that way. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency recently became an HBO television series.

Another series by Alexander McCall Smith is The Isabel Dalhousie Novels -among them; The Sunday Philosophy Club, and Friends Lovers Chocolate. I’ve read four of this series, so I like them fine. Not as wonderful as the The No. 1 Ladies but fun to read. The protagonist, Isabel Dalhousie has a lot of similarities to Mma Ramotswe despite the vast difference in the way she lives her life and the country she lives in. (Scotland as opposed to Africa) Like Mma Ramotswe, Isabel is morally minded. She
constantly questions her choices in terms of
fairness and correctness - she is a philosopher
after all. She often sticks her nose in where it
doesn't belong and doesn’t give up until she has
a solution to that particular dilemma. It is interesting to hear how life is lived in Edinburgh,
Scotland. Book #5 The Comforts of a Muddy
Saturday is the latest installment and is currently
available in hard cover.

What about Canada, eh?
Check out L.R. Wright whose mysteries are set on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia. My father recommended this author to me when he lived in Vancouver, and I dug right in. Wright’s novels are grittier and of a more serious nature than the other series recommeded on this page. I’ve found them available at
my local library.

Stephanie Plum Novels
by Janet Evanovich
There are 15 of them and I’ve read all but the most recent. It’s easy to keep track with the author’s number titles: One for the Money, Two for the Dough...

This series is light and fun, except for some of the gory things that happen to the people in it. It is mostly written “tongue in cheek” with lots of laughs and characters that aren’t too deep. Stephanie, American bounty hunter, is a hoot and so is her sidekick Lula, a former “ho” (she makes me laugh the most), who comes into
Evanovich’s novels a few books in and remains there. If you want to enjoy fast-food vicariously, (literally and figuratively) this is the way.

The newest book Finger Lickin’ Fifteen was available in bookstores June 23, 2009. It promises to be a spicy adventure.