Recently I walked to the bookcase in search of the next book. It is always a difficult time. It is a time of expectation and suspense. What, after all, lurks on those shelves that hasn't been read before or is worthy of a re-read? Especially living in a non-English speaking country where even Amazon needs a couple of weeks to deliver and there is no corner bookstore, this is a worrisome time. What if there is nothing there to read? What then?
There was Dickens' Barnaby Rudge, which I look forward to but wasn't in the mood to tackle and some Thomas Hardy short stories and even a Mark Twain novelette I have never read, ; and Bellow's Henderson The Rain King, which is an old friend waiting for a re-read. None of these tempted me this week.
Then I noticed a book my wife had finished that she had received while in the hospital, and I stuck at the bottom of a pile, its dust cover lost, title fading. A homely book in shades of brown and beige. Dry and dusty African colors.
It turned out to be part of a detective series about a highly unlikely detective lady "of traditional build" who is in and of and proud of her Africa and her place in a traditional Botswana. The series by Alexander McCall Smith is the "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series and now I want more because this one was satisfyingly sweet and fascinating in its view of a place I will never visit and a culture that I will not only never meet but, like other traditional cultures and places, is quickly changing and "modernizing".
Our heroine Mma Precious Ramotswe is the chief detective and a traditional lady. She sees a minor crime and worries about it and tries to stop it. "It was not true that such a thing could not have happened in the old Botswana...but it was...much more likely to happen today."
There were many selfish people about these days, people who seemed not to care if they scraped the cars of others or bumped into people while walking on the street... this was what happened when towns became bigger and people became strangers to one another... this was a consequence of increasing prosperity, which, curiously enough, just seemed to bring out greed and selfishness...
She is a traditional person in a country poised between tribal villages and values and the world of "rich ladies in Mercedes Benz." The rich lady is part of one of life's little mysteries that the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency solves when such a woman entrances the apprentice to Mma Ramotswe's husband, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, the owner of Thlokweng Road Speedy Motors. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni is a traditional man who knows cars. He, too, teeters on the brink of tradition and development. "And as for Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni's reputation... this was built on that most simple and immediately recognizable of human virtues: decency..." He is the mechanic we all spend years looking for and hoping to find.
Article comments
1 - Rob Salmon
Hi there - I've read all of the No.1 Lady Detective Series and they really are such entertaining reads...once I'd gone through the lot I moved on to his books on Professor Dr von Igelfeld - and they are really really funny... more info here: