There is a delicious new addition to the genre of female detectives. She is Precious Ramotswe, founder of The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency to be found in Gaborone, Botswana.

Precious is gentle and kind, and of a traditional size for women of her land, that is, dress size 22. She is also compassionate and wise and solves problems with a shrewd insight into human personality and behaviour. Mma Ramotswe has an assistant, Mma Makutsi who founded The Kalahari Typing School for Men and she is also the fond fiancé of Mr JLB Matekoni, proprietor of the Tiokweng Road Speedy Motors and a far different sort of fellow than her former, drunkard husband.

These engaging characters are the creations of Alexander McCall Smith, a Scot who spent his childhood years in Zimbabwe. After completing his education in Edinburgh he returned to Africa and lectured in Swaziland, then after visiting friends in Botswana he settled there and set up a law school. He is now a Professor of Medical Law in Edinburgh, but is also the author of around fifty books.

Mma Precious is the heroine of a series of five. In 1999 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. Clearly these slim novels that simulate simplicity are quality fiction of the highest order.

McCall Smith said of his books “the fact that the grammatically correct English which Mma Ramotswe and her friends are using sounds to our ear slightly old-fashioned. But it is African English, that’s how people speak, with that very correct, well-formed diction. You can hear the influence of the King James version of the Bible. I find it very attractive, very musical. I feel that people are quite happy to read prose that would strike some as being rather old-fashioned and gentle. You can get that by reading Tolstoy, but this is the modern world and this is real.”

reviewed by Margaret Rodgers