The Boy Who Stole the Leopard's Spots

Book excerpt: 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.