The Boy Who Stole the Leopard's Spots
A Mystery
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Like Alexander McCall Smith’s ever-popular No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels, The Boy Who Stole the Leopard’s Spots immerses readers in a breathtaking African landscape they simply will not wish to leave. For the third time, author Tamar Myers carries readers a world away from Charleston, South Carolina, and her Den of Antiquity cozy mysteries—circling the globe to the Belgian Congo in equatorial Africa in the 1950s. The Boy Who Stole the Leopard’s Spots is a wonderfully engrossing, breathtakingly evocative return to the lush locale of her previous acclaimed African-set mysteries, The Witchdoctor’s Wife (“[A] mesmerizing novel….Authentic. Powerful. Triumphant” —Carolyn Hart) and The Headhunter’s Daughter—as a monsignor of the Catholic church, shamed by a secret event in his past and accused of a terrible crime, must join forces with an American missionary, a police chief, and a witchdoctor and his wise-woman wife to clear his name.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A weak story line hobbles Myers's third mystery set in 1950s Belgian Congo (after 2011's The Headhunter's Daughter), though the author makes good use of her personal knowledge of the country, where she grew up. The action alternates between 1935, when two children prepare to practice "the ancient custom of cannibalism," and 1958, where the police chief of Belle Vue, Pierre Jardin, has a murder to solve. That killing follows a dispute between Lazarus Chigger Mite and Jonathan Pimple, two villagers, about the ownership of a goat that belonged to Pimple before it was swallowed by a python killed by Mite. Myers signals how past and present intersect early on, eliminating some of the surprise impact. Efforts to inject farce into the drama don't always succeed, and Kwei Quartey and others have better portrayed the collision of superstition and modernity.
