Well done to every last detail!

This is part of a very popular whodunnit series, "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency." I had never heard of this series until I discovered it in a bookstore before a long bus ride through a foreign country. "Tears of the Giraffe" carried me away to Botswana. It was a cultural introduction, but it wasn't ABOUT the culture. It has all the elements of the traditional whodunnit, but it's really about storytelling, about Mma Ramotswe's way of thinking, about good and bad and simple emotions. By not trying to be anything more than a typical mystery story, it actually did achieve more.

"Tears of the Giraffe" is up there with "Murder on the Orient Express," "The Maltese Falcon," and "Instead of Evidence" as one of my favorite works in this genre. I definitely plan to read the rest of this series.

There is a detail that shouldn't affect my opinion of the book but did. I had the Anchor Books edition, which was not on goodreads, probably because of marketing. The cover and the paper inside are soft and silky smooth, and the paper has an amazing smell. Sometimes I pick up this book just to hold it, so you can imagine how I never wanted to put it down while I was reading it. Also, the cover illustration is amazing. It's as if this giraffe got my attention and said, "Read me." That's probably why I picked it out of a bookstore in a foreign city in a huge hurry. Even, or especially, these details contributed to my complete satisfaction with "Tears of the Giraffe."