The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander Mccall Smith

I picked up this book in a bargain bin, and although it wasn't horrible, I can see why it ended up there.

The "lady" in question is an African women who has started a detective agency in the bush of Africa after her father's passing. The biggest mystery she sets out to solve is who the daughter of a wealthy Indian man is seeing. Much more time is spent on that than on the story of the kidnapped child or, for that matter, the emotional development of the characters. Sometimes, an author surprises you with their ability to write a character of the opposite sex so well. Smith didn't succeed in doing that here. Although it wasn't bad enough for me to put it down, (I was stuck in a dorm room in Tennessee looking after a bunch of junior high students), when I saw that there were three or four more books written about the same characters I almost groaned. There is no way this book would hold itself in a series. But at least I had something to do in the dorm, even if I won't ever read the rest of the books.