Book reviews (part 12)

It's time for another batch of book related opinions, as I take a look at two books from two of my favourite authors - Alexander McCall Smith and John Grisham - and also a couple of humorous books from other authors...

Morality For Beautiful Girls
by Alexander McCall Smith

Morality For Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith - 4.5 / 5.0

In this the third book in the No.1 Ladies Detetive Agency series Precious Ramotswe deals with the issue of relocating the detective agency to the offices of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's garage. She also investigates the out of character behaviour from Rra Matekoni himself, as well as a couple of cases involving an unusual orphan and a potential poisoning.

This is another enjoyable account of Mma Ramotswe's eventful life, and any fans of the first two books will once again appreciate Morality For Beautiful Girls as the format is the same. The narrative also contains the occasional brief passage which summarises the most significant events of the first two books, so this third book could quite easily be read as a stand-alone book by any new readers.

Tricky Business by Dave Barry

Tricky Business by Dave Barry - 4.0 / 5.0

Tricky Business is set on the Extravaganza Of The Seas gambling cruise ship, where the passengers suddenly find their regular unremarkable lives becoming drastically more exciting, thanks to a dodgy criminal deal which takes place on the boat and which sees several dubious criminals double crossing each other for a bigger slice of the pie. It's a funny book, and the style of humour was right up my street and reminded me of Carl Hiassen. The characters often engage in random conversations which are unrelated to the overall plot, but which help you get to know the characters, and this random banter was something which appealed to my reading tastes.

As a note of caution, the book features some very violent scenes involving a lot of death and graphically described injuries, so Tricky Business is a book that probably won't appeal to everyone.

The King Of Torts by John Grisham

The King Of Torts by John Grisham - 4.9 / 5.0

The blurb to The King of Torts describes a small time lawyer (Clay Carter) who accidentally stumbles upon one of the dodgiest pharmaceutical cases in the history of law and medicine. I was expecting the book to deal exclusively with this storyline, but it turns out that this is just the first of many plot developments.

In actual fact The King Of Torts is a story of greed, and how it can potentially turn you into the thing you previously hated the most, rather than a tale exclusively related to the pharmaceutical case. You begin the book rooting for Clay Carter to succeed, but as the plot progresses he gradually transforms into the thing he used to despise. Once I started reading The King Of Torts I had it finished in a few days and looked forward to reading this book at every available opportunity. The King Of Torts is John Grisham at his brilliant best.

The Book Of Bunny Suicides by Andy Riley - 4.7 / 5.0

The Book Of Bunny Suicides by Andy Riley

I read this book after reading Great Lies To Tell Small Kids by the same author and I was pleased to discover that the sense of humour is very similar. As the name suggests, The Book Of Bunny Suicides features page after page of illustrations showing various ingenious ways for bunnies to kill themselves. Once again the humour works best when you actually see the illustrations, but to give you an idea of what to expect, one typical illustration shows a bunny at the home of a distraught woman who has evidently just been dumped by her boyfriend, as the bunny inserts Fatal Attraction into the DVD player.

As with Great Lies To Tell Small Kids, author Andy Riley demonstrates that he has a very creative mind and this was very much my sense of humour. As I also cautioned with the previous book though, the sense of humour perhaps won't be to everyone's taste, so try the sample for the Kindle app and if you enjoy the first few pages then you'll like the rest of the book.

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The previous book reviews were the opinions of Charles Fudgemuffin. Charles is the author of 'Dead Men Tell No Tales' which is available for kindle from Amazon.

More book reviews by Charles Fudgemuffin:
Book reviews (part 10)
Book reviews (part 11)

Please note, all promotional images used on this blog remain the copyright of the respective authors and publishers and are used in accordance with 'Fair Use' legislation for review purposes.