Book: The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency

[redbird]

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.

Comments

[lisajulie.livejournal.com]

I think it is wrongly billed as a _mystery novel_.

I dunno what exact genre I would put it in, because there isn't one labeled "comfortable". But I walk away from the books feeling obscurely comforted that there are people who _want_ to act and behave in ways that make their society work well.

Not really a spoiler, but in a later book, the main character chastizes another person for not hiring servants. Not for snob value, but for income distribution - people with money _should_ (for moral values of _should_) hire people to work to spread the wealth around. People who don't follow this requirement are social subversives and regarded as socially destructive.

I really like reading them, especially when current events intrude on my life.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

This is approximately my reaction to this book as well, pretty much start to finish.

[stevendj.livejournal.com]

That was my reaction as well. Pleasant enough, but not quite what I'm looking for in even the "pleasant enough" category.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

I agree about the pleasantness. I also found some of it mildly irritating, such as all the gentility (which may not be quite the right word) and the importance of conforming to societal rules just because they exist (not my thing at all). I wish I knew enough about contemporary Botswana to know how realistic it was; it felt very, I don't know, contrived.

[firecat]

thanks for the review - i'd been thinking about reading that, but there are things higher on my priority list.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

My brother acquired the first five or six books in the series, in hardback yet, read them and fairly quickly decided to get rid of them. He gave them to me, I read them in quick succession on an ineptly-routed train trip from Oxford to Cheltenham, and I found them equally underwhelming and donated them to a happy local library at the next opportunity.

They're calming, but after four in a row it's as if I'd spent the entire bus ride eating only moderately nutritious stew with comforting dumplings in; I suppose to some extent they're anti-science-fiction, set in a world which knows it's very traditional but thinks all the alternative possibilities are worse. It feels as if there's at least half a dimension missing from the characters.

As does, in fact, almost all of the rest of the prodigious output of Alexander McCall Smith; it may well be the kind of writing for which the appropriate description is 'bourgeois'.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I couldn't read more than one in a row: but there are times, I think I posted about 'ideal reading while waiting for court appearance in re dispute with computer technician', when they are just the thing one wants.

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

I was thinking of you last week as Suzanne Gordon's work* and the topic of and around nurses' voices came up again in two different meetings. The piece that caught my eye here was about "deferring."

[shikzoid.livejournal.com]

Actually, the fact that they're not the typical "mystery" is what I like about them. A few years ago I noticed book reviews referring to "murder mysteries", and wondered if there is any other kind. (Well, there's Nancy Atherton's novels, but that's about it.)

I like the fact that Smith's books don't follow the same tired outline, so that you aren't waiting for the part where a secondary character bites it, or figuring that there should be a red herring showing up soon.

Sometimes I just don't want to have to work so hard at reading a book, especially lately. The Precious Ramotswe books are more like reading light short stories.

It's interesting how occasionally a book I love just doesn't do it for some of my friends.

[pariyal.livejournal.com]

I've just finished The Kalahari Typing School for Men, and I can tell you that all of the others are less episodic than the first, with two or three clear interwoven plot threads. I like them a lot, but yes, they're ultra-light. Even the language is: N is reading them too, and she's had less than two years of English.

[nolly.livejournal.com]

According to the author (who recently did a signing locally), they're quite popular in Botswana. He's deliberately focusing on the pleasant side of life, to remind readers that it exists -- he only indirectly touches on serious issues like the AIDS epidemic. As has been said, later books are less episodic. I usually describe them as "slice of life" books --- they really aren't detective books.

I wouldn't want to read a lot of them back-to-back, but they're a very pleasant interlude, and a series I, my mother, and my grandmother all enjoy.

I've read the first Sunday Philosophy Club book, and was underwhelmed, but I found the second one used, at a low enough price to risk it -- I just haven't gotten to it yet.

The Professor von Igelfield books are amusing in their own way, but definitely not for everyone; probably a library or used-bargain read. These are about the misadventures and rivalries of a few German linguistics professors; familiarity with academia improves them, I think.

I also recently picked up 44 Scotland Street, also in the to-be-read queue, but he read an excerpt from the third volume (not yet published in the US) at the signing, and I think I'll like these very much. These are an ongoing series of newspaper columns, feturing a cast of characters living in the same building, so I expect they're more collected vignettes than novels, but the character featured in what he read was definitely amusing.

As for the man himself, very likable -- charming, witty, intelligent. He co-founded the Really Terrible Orchestra in Edinborough, which sounds like great fun to participate in, if not necessarily to listen to. Medical Law professor emeritus from the University of Edinborough.