The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (Book 1) | Alexander McCall Smith

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (Book 1) | Alexander McCall Smith | Utterly Charming

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The No. 1 Ladies' ...

	The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (Book 1) Alexander McCall Smith Anchor, 2003 - 235 pages average customer review:based on 404 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith?s widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to ?help people with problems in their lives.? Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that tugs at her heart, and lands her in danger, is a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by witchdoctors.

The No. 1 Ladies? Detective Agency received two Booker Judges? Special Recommendations and was voted one of the International Books of the Year and the Millennium by the Times Literary Supplement.

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life-affirming book with the unforgettable main character

When Precious Ramotswe's father, Obed, dies and leaves her all the cattle with the advice to sell it and buy herself a good business, she decides to become a private detective, the first lady detective in Botswana, and perhaps in the whole of Africa.

Mma Ramotswe, smart, fat and good-natured, equipped with a detective handbook, great memory, and unfailing sense of right and wrong, sets out to help her neighbors and solve the crimes and mysteries happening around. These are not very serious crimes - an impostor, a naughty daughter, a cheating husband, a dishonest employee - but Mma Ramotswe takes her clients seriously, like her role model, Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, and solves the problems using all her abilities, her wisdom, intuition, cleverness, wit and tact.

Mma Ramotswe enjoys her freedom, her house in Zebra Drive in Gaborone and her detective agency in her native country she loves. She is, by all standards, a successful, happy woman. Thanks to his father's cattle she can live in a town, do whatever she wants, drink her favorite redbush tea and have no problems, but she is compassionate and friendly, and really cares for other people. Her detective agency functions also as a psychoanalytical service, although her clients are grossly unaware of this fact. She also loves her country, Botswana, where Kalahari desert dictates the conditions of life, where people live simply, in harmony with nature, believing in the strength of their society and their banks full of diamonds, and wish only to be left in peace. Only her memories, intertwining with the stories of solved crimes, show the dark side of her and her father's life in Botswana, hard work in the mines, dishonest, hurtful people and misery, which she narrowly escaped and which is the fate of many other ordinary people in her country.

Alexander McCall , who lived in Africa for a long time, has managed to pour his love for this sun- dried, rough continent into the pages of his novel, creating one of the most life-affirming and optimistic books I have recently read. "Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency" is written with a lot of humor and easy to read. It is also warm and cheerful, like its main protagonist, the charming Mma Ramotswe. It is a simple book, not aspiring to formal sophistry, but it is good because of the feelings it evokes in the reader - it is not cerebral, but heartfelt. I am very happy this unusual detective story is the first of a long series, because it is a promise of many delights to come.

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Utterly Charming

These books are not serious fiction, finely constructed mysteries or the greatest books ever written on Africa. Instead, they are a quiet, gentle and heartwarming series of vignettes that provide insight into the human condition and a peak at the Africa of Botswana. Further, they are not entirely saccharine either as they touch on issues such as domestic violence and the trials and tribulations of serious poverty. Yet at the end of each of these books, I always feel better. This is a rare combination indeed.

I tend to read what most people would consider "serious" fiction and nonfiction. You will more often than not find me curled up with something by Camus, Nietzsche or Borges. Rose-colored glasses are not my style and it took an insistent friend to get me to read this first volume. I now gladly admit to being seduced by Smith's deceptively simple prose and characters.

These books are meant to be read at the beach or bedtime and later passed on to friends. Gentle wisdom is best undertaken gently. If you can approach these books in the spirit I believe Smith intended, then you might be find in them something sorely missing in this world of ours.

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A Glimpse of Southern Africa from an Author Who Knows

This gently humorous book and its five similarly funny companions offer more than an engaging story line. You learn that Botswana is a true success story, one of the few in post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa. You can also learn something about the culture, social behavior, languages, and personal values of the people. Of course you need only go to Wikipedia or to Google "Botswana" to gain access to a wealth of facts, if facts will suffice. But, if you wish to be touched by the fabric of Botswana life the six books of the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series, will let it happen and provide much to ponder.

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