I picked up The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith for a couple of reasons:
01. I had a coupon I wanted to use.
02. I had heard good things.
Unlike Life of Pi, which I’d also heard good things about, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency wasn’t a huge disappointment.
I really liked the main character, Mma Precious Ramotswe, who, once her beloved father passes away, sells her inheritance of cattle to buy a building and set up a private detective business. She’s a modern Miss Marple, using mostly insight into human nature to solve her mysteries.
Unlike Agatha Christie’s heroine, Mma Ramotswe doesn’t solve any murders – at least not in this book – and mostly solves cases that, at least to me, correspond with more real world happenings. Not that people aren’t murdered in the real world, but I feel like thefts must be happening more frequently than murders, particularly in smaller, rural areas. She basically solves the mysteries people in a small, rural area would be worried about – cheating husbands, stolen dogs, mistaken identity. She does tackle some disappearances though, one of which could be highly dangerous to take on: that of a child who is believed to have been kidnapped and murdered for muti (medicine made by a witchdoctor, which usually involves killing a child for the child’s parts).
The idea for the story was inspired by the 1994 murder of Segametsi Mogomotsi, a 14 year old girl who was murdered for muti.
My other favorite part of the novel was the setting. The story takes place in Africa, specifically Botswana.
I’ve always wanted to go to Africa – I’ve been fascinated with the wildlife since I was a small child. But the part of my brain that is more sensible, the part that says, “Hey, doing 90 MPH on a dark lonesome highway is fun, but you’re probably going to get yourself killed, or worse, get a speeding ticket and raised car insurance rates, so maybe you should slow down to, say, 70?” that part says about Africa, “For every good reason to go to Africa, there are ten good reasons NOT to go to Africa.”
And every time I hear about civil wars and gang rapes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or about child soldiers and Joseph Kony, or about blood diamonds in Sierra Leone, or a break out of Ebola, or someone who got HIV & AIDS from infected food, I tend to think that maybe I really don’t want to see giraffes THAT badly.
But Mma Ramotswe is proud to be from Africa (even if she doesn’t like the snakes, and let’s be real, I don’t blame her) and seeing things from the perspective of someone who doesn’t love America or want to be an American is a refreshing change. She wants to make Africa a better, happier place in a way that has nothing to do with personal advancement.
She’s not dying to get married either. This is a huge BONUS, since I feel like I’m at a point in my life where most people are starting to get married and I’m not anywhere near that. But she was married and her husband was abusive, and now she wants to provide only for herself and there are no husbands in her future… at least until her BFF proposes to her a second time and she agrees because he’s a good man.
I don’t know how accurate the portrayal of this African lady is – she’s really proud to be a proper African shape, which is fat, according to her, which is very foreign to me – and she was written by some Scottish guy, but hey, she’s different. I love her.
I’m not in a huge rush to read the rest of the series – yes, it is a series – but I probably will eventually, just to see what Mma Ramostwe does next.
words in scarlet ink 