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Book Summary and Reviews of The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith

The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith

The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon

No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (14)

by Alexander McCall Smith

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  • Nov 2013, 256 pages
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Book Summary

Precious Ramotswe has taken on two puzzling cases. First she is approached by the lawyer Mma Sheba, who is the executor of a deceased farmer's estate. Mma Sheba has a feeling that the young man who has stepped forward may be falsely impersonating the farmer's nephew in order to claim his inheritance.

Mma Ramotswe agrees to visit the farm and find out what she can about the self-professed nephew. Then the proprietor of the Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon comes to Mma Ramotswe for advice. The opening of her new salon has been shadowed by misfortune. Not only has she received a bad omen in the mail, but rumors are swirling that the salon is using dangerous products that burn people's skin. Could someone be trying to put the salon out of business?

Meanwhile, at the office, Mma Ramotswe has noticed something different about Grace Makutsi lately. Though Mma Makutsi has mentioned nothing, it has become clear that she is pregnant... But in Botswana - a land where family has always been held above all else—this may be cause for controversy as well as celebration.

With genuine warmth, sympathy, and wit, Alexander McCall Smith explores some tough questions about married life, parenthood, grief, and the importance of the traditions that shape and guide our lives.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"The two story lines work as serviceably as Mma Ramotswe's doughty white van to propel the story forward, but the book's appeal lies less in deduction than irrepressible characters, intriguing local lore, and bone-deep love of Africa." - Publishers Weekly

"Starred Review. "They're leisurely, wonderfully crafted descriptions of life in the agency and at home, the beauties of Botswana, and the joys, big and small, of life. This latest [novel] is, especially, a tribute to enduring friendship." - Booklist

"A fine addition to one of mystery's most endearing series." - Barnes and Noble

This information about The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Cloggie Downunder

charming, uplifting and heart-warming.
The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon is the fourteenth book in the popular Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by British author, Alexander McCall Smith. Botswana’s first female private detective has a few interesting cases to solve: a solicitor asks her to verify the identity of a young man who is the beneficiary of a will; and the proprietor of the Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon is subject to threats and slander from an unknown quarter. All the more challenging for Mma Ramotswe, as Mma Makutsi is off having a baby. Mma Makutsi faces childbirth with ease, although she has slightly less aplomb when dealing with a cobra in her new house. While it seems Phuti’s interfering aunt may be a problem with the baby, apprentice Charlie’s reaction to this Radiphuti baby is indeed a surprise. And has the terrible Violet Sephotho been up to more mischief? Mma Ramotswe muses on flats and hats, ants and aunts, names, wet nurses, superstitions and traditional ways, other people’s marriages, beer and beauty treatments, the effect of hot weather on business, taking the time to listen, optimistic accounting, the entire truth, protecting one’s sources and private milk. She counts her blessings, misses Grace, finds the perfect gift for the baby, gets her tiny white van comprehensively stuck in the mud, has her feet lovingly washed and receives a charming letter from Clovis Anderson, that revered author of the Principles of Private Detection. There are no prizes for guessing which of the apprentices finally qualifies as a mechanic. Mr J L B Matekoni takes steps to become a modern husband, one of which includes baked beans and sausages. As usual, this installment is charming, uplifting and heart-warming.

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Author Information

Alexander McCall Smith Author Biography

Alexander McCall Smith began the now highly successful 'No 1 Ladies Detective Agency' series in 1996, after being inspired by the sight of a 'traditionally built' Botswanan lady chasing down a chicken for a meal. The first book in the series - 'The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency' was published in the UK in 1998 but didn't arrive in the USA until 2001.

Known to his friends as Sandy, McCall Smith describes the Botswanans as 'genuinely courteous people' He knows Botswana well as he grew up there and also spent several years on the law faculty of the University of Botswana; his volume on the legal system of Botswana (The Criminal Law of Botswana) remains the definitive and in fact, only book on the subject.

In 2004 he published the first in a...

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