Nothing in the book raised red flags for me, and I thought his treatment was respectful and sympathetic without being patronizing, but I've been burned before thinking a foreigner writing about another country did a fine job when according to the people living there now, it was, uh, not so great. I know precisely nothing I can't scrape off of Wikipedia about Botswana, so I cannot attest to how well Alexandra McCall Smith, a Zimbabwe-born Scottish author, portrayed a country he's lived in but is not a citizen of, from the POV of an African woman. I liked this first book very much and thought Precious was wonderful and the stories were warm and mostly cheerful, but with just enough seriousness to keep them out of "cozy" territory, and just enough irony to keep them from getting schmaltzy. A woman who suspects the man who suddenly appeared at her home and told her to go make him a sandwich might not really be her long-lost father, as he claims. Fathers who want to monitor their teenage daughters. Women who want to know the truth about their philandering husbands (or say they do). Of course, they are not exactly big-ticket cases. Initially, there seems to be little demand for private detectives in Botswana, and none for a lady detective, but slowly, cases start trickling in. Precious is the sort of protagonist you don't see a lot of in popular genre fiction, and which lots of people say they want to see more of: she's an unabashedly fat black woman, she does not center her life around men, and she is not a "strong female character" in the sense of leaping into action with martial arts or paranormal abilities or guns blazing - just intuition, keen observational skills, and a sense of justice and humanity.Īfter having married a bad-boy trumpet player, a marriage which went the way of most such ill-thought marriages, Precious Ramotswe sells her inheritance from her father when he dies and uses it to start her own business, the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is that it's set in Botswana, and the main character, Precious Ramotswe, is the only lady detective in the country. Over the years, I've enjoyed a handful of series with an interesting hook beyond "tormented hot dude/gal with a past Solves Crime!" The modern mystery genre is full of series based on such "hooks" - Navajo detectives, Samurai detectives, Stalinist KGB detectives, Victorian Egyptologist detectives, and so on. I like the occasional mystery, though I'm very much not a fan of cozies. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is that rare novel that imparts a sage wisdom while inspiring hearty laughter and lasting smiles. Potentially philandering husbands, seemingly schizophrenic doctors, and a missing boy who may have been killed by witch doctors all compel Precious to roam about in her tiny van, searching for clues.Ĭhosen as a Top Ten Mystery by the Organization of Independent Booksellers, U.S.A., The No. But eventually, troubled people come to Precious with a variety of concerns. Mma "Precious" Ramotswe sets up a detective agency in Botswana on the edge of the Kalahari Desert, making her the only female detective in the country. It has since earned two Booker Judges' Special Recommendations and was voted one of the "International Books of the Year and the Millennium" by the Times Literary Supplement. This remarkably fresh and charming best seller took the world by storm upon its publication.
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