Anchor Books © 2002 (orig. pub. 1998), 235 pages

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, first published in 1998, is the first in Alexander McCall Smith’s acclaimed Botswana series. (See my review of Blue Shoes and Happiness, the seventh book in the series.) Precious Ramotswe is the lady detective behind the book’s title. She opened her agency with money inherited from her father, Obed Ramotswe. In this first installment we learn about Obed’s life–he worked for years in South Africa’s mines, saved his money, and later invested in cattle–and also about Mma Ramotswe’s early history. (”Mma,”pronounced “mah,” is a term of respect that appears throughout the book.) She grew up in Mochudi, raised by her father and a cousin. Against her father’s wishes she leapt into an unhappy marriage that left her alone and grieving her only child’s death in infancy. It’s an unhappy chapter in Mma Ramotswe’s life, but it packs meat onto her character: she is not all homespun goodness, that is, but was capable in her youth of awesome folly, and what wisdom she has was hard won. The book offers an account of Mma Ramotswe’s earliest cases, which she solves with legwork and good sense and the occasional help of her friends, in particular Mr. J.L.B. Maketoni, the proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. Mma Ramotswe is not the sort of detective one calls upon to solve grand crimes, but neither are all of her cases trivial. In addition to dealing with a client’s wayward daughter, for example,

and a doctor’s worry about his colleague’s competency, she is concerned throughout this book with the case of a missing eleven-year-old boy. The story of his disappearance and of her involvement in the case is woven throughout the book.

It’s an unhappy chapter in Mma Ramotswe’s life, but it packs meat onto her character: she is not all homespun goodness, that is, but was capable in her youth of awesome folly, and what wisdom she has was hard won.McCall Smith’s series is not plot-driven. Mma Ramotswe’s cases give the books their framework, but the focus is on Mma Ramotswe’s character and on the counattempt of Botswana itself: the setting of McCall Smith’s books is at minimum as important to the stories as his protagonist. But although one doesn’t think of the books primarily as mysteries, they are in fact good cozies, so the books can be enjoyed on that score as well.

If you haven’t yet stumbled on McCall Smith’s series, you have yet to experience the singular joy of slipping into Mma Ramotswe’s world. There is something soothing about the experience, and I’m not sure how the author achieves this magic: the simplicity of his language, perhaps, or of his characters’ ethos. At any rate, the books are a pleasure to be savored.

Tags: Alexander McCall Smith, book reviews, books, Mma Ramotswe