This is the stuff :-)
A twelve year old girl and a rather unusual detective must save the world from an evil sorcerer. Magic, mayhem and a good dose of wisecracking humour.
I was a little thrown at first by the author's juxtaposition of terms like "sidewalk" and "wheelie bin", but then it became clear that the book was set in Dublin and I remembered similar usages in the Artemis Fowl books, so I'm assuming that a mixture of US and UK terms is normal usage for Irish authors writing in English.
Apart from that i don't have anything to compalin of with this one - it has morally ambiguous characters, an interesting backstory and a decent plot and I liked the protagonists very much. We'll definitely be reading the sequels.
53. The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan. 321 pages
I like Amy Tan's books as a rule and this one was no exception, but I didn't like it as much as the others - the protagonist struck me as whiny and weak, and I lost a great deal of sympathy for her in the first chapter when she reveals that she tried to "undress" her pet turtles at the age of four and pulled their heads off. I find it very hard to fully sympathise with a character who could do such a thing, even though they were very young, much less do it again after the first one.
Otherwise, a good story, with interesting insights into Chinese culture and history.
