It is in the nature of the series that Blue Shoes and Happiness doesn't introduce any new and revolutionary twists into the formula. No new characters are introduced, although the latest addition to the combination garage/detective agency at the heart of the story, Mr. Polopetsi, makes a sad mistake as he tries to contribute to the latter side of the business. Charlie, the older apprentice, might actually be getting serious about a girl ... but if he does, it's not confirmed in this installment. The younger and less troublesome apprentice still hasn't been given the dignity of a name. On the continuity front, Grace Makutsi is still making two kinds of tea, which is good, although we are suddenly confronted with the never-before-hinted-at assertion that she was widowed at some point in her backstory, which is bad.
The blue shoes of the title are Mma Makutsi's. (The shoes pictured on the cover are most emphatically not her shoes, which explicitly have a red lining in the story.) Mma Makutsi continues her evolution as a terrific character, with the hilarious and charming trait of imagining her shoes berating her for her missteps as she looks at the ground in anxiety or consternation: "You've done it, Boss, said the shoes. Don't expect us to carry you all around town looking for another man. You had one and now you don't. Bad luck, Boss. Bad luck."
As for Mma Ramotswe, she has a characteristically conservative outlook on societal change and the younger generation: "Take one country, with all that the country means, with its kind people, and their smiles, and their habit of helping one another; ignore all this; shake about; add modern ideas; bake until ruined."
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