By Alexander McCall Smith
Mma Ramotswe and her assistant Grace Makutsi are the two detectives of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency located in Gaborone, Botswana. The lady detectives are not in the business of tracking down dangerous people. That kind of work they are glad to leave to the police. No, their investigations are of the domestic type, like their current case of a woman trying to locate her family. Mma Sebina's mother died with a secret and Mma Sebina believes the secret was that her mother adopted her and now she wants to locate her relatives. So Mma Ramotswe has to discover first, if the woman was adopted and second, where her family might be.
Another mystery is more personal to Mma Ramotswe and Grace Makutsi. Someone has sent them an unsigned letter that says: "Fat lady: you watch out! And you too, the one with the big glasses. You watch out too!" Mma Ramotswe is not the kind of person to step on other people's toes so she is at a loss to understand who would send her a threatening letter. She even begins to fear she is being followed as she goes about her investigations.
So the story goes, composed of small yet fascinating situations and minor mysteries that Mma Ramotswe manages to handle with grace and composure, including her husband getting swindled by a crooked doctor making promises of a cure for their crippled child. Visiting with The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency is a sweet escape and makes for very pleasant, escapist reading. I enjoyed this novel a lot.
For another review see Mostly Fiction Book Reviews.
New Words
Vade mecum: a handbook; a concise reference book providing specific information about a subject or location. 'They had not invented the term, having found it in the pages of her vade mecum, Clovis Andersen's The Principles of Private Detection.'
Kudu: large African antelope. '"But her eyes are quite big, aren't they? Have you seen them, Mma Ramotswe? They are big, like the eyes of a kudu."'
A Kudu:
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