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It seems as though everyone I know who reads mysteries has been saying good things about Alexander McCall Smith's books about Precious Ramotswe, which start with The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency.
I picked up a copy the last time I was at the library. It's a pleasant read. I think I might like the protagonist: she looks at people and things, and thinks about them. I say "might" because she has some attitudes about things like respect for older people that might well rub me the wrong way, even though I'm older than she is (at the point of this first book, at least)—in my culture, an on-duty registered nurse wouldn't automatically defer to a stranger just because the stranger was 15 years older than the nurse. But she'd probably think I was far too hurried, and not want my company either.
That curiosity and noticing are her main qualifications as a detective. That, and wanting to be one; she periodically runs into a stranger who questions the idea that a woman can be a private detective, and her invariable response is to ask if they've heard of Agatha Christie.
The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency feels like a pleasant slice-of-life of contemporary Botswana (though for all I know Smith's Botswana has nothing in common with the actual place beyond name and location). We get a variety of stories about Ramotswe, her father, other bits of her past, and people she meets in the course of her work. What it doesn't feel like is a mystery novel: it's very episodic, and the main connections between the episodes are Ramotswe and a few of her neighbors, rather than a problem to be solved or a crime to be investigated (though one question from early in the book is resolved later).
I'm not sorry I read this, because it was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours, but I'm glad I got it at the library, and probably won't read further in the series.
I picked up a copy the last time I was at the library. It's a pleasant read. I think I might like the protagonist: she looks at people and things, and thinks about them. I say "might" because she has some attitudes about things like respect for older people that might well rub me the wrong way, even though I'm older than she is (at the point of this first book, at least)—in my culture, an on-duty registered nurse wouldn't automatically defer to a stranger just because the stranger was 15 years older than the nurse. But she'd probably think I was far too hurried, and not want my company either.
That curiosity and noticing are her main qualifications as a detective. That, and wanting to be one; she periodically runs into a stranger who questions the idea that a woman can be a private detective, and her invariable response is to ask if they've heard of Agatha Christie.
The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency feels like a pleasant slice-of-life of contemporary Botswana (though for all I know Smith's Botswana has nothing in common with the actual place beyond name and location). We get a variety of stories about Ramotswe, her father, other bits of her past, and people she meets in the course of her work. What it doesn't feel like is a mystery novel: it's very episodic, and the main connections between the episodes are Ramotswe and a few of her neighbors, rather than a problem to be solved or a crime to be investigated (though one question from early in the book is resolved later).
I'm not sorry I read this, because it was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours, but I'm glad I got it at the library, and probably won't read further in the series.
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