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100 Books in One Year #42: The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

Cannonball Read / Brian Prisco

Book Reviews | February 9, 2009 | Comments (11)

I had been meaning to read this series since it came out. I had a slew of older women customers who would come into Barnes and Noble looking for a good read, and I was constantly on the look out for something for them. If they dug violence and sex, I would send them to Harlen Coben or P.J. Tracy, for some fun stuff. It’s the pub burger to Patterson’s McDoubles. But I could never find anything that wasn’t too racy.

Well, here it is. It’s a charming mystery, that I can only describe as quaint. Mma Precious Ramotswe is a fat, happy woman running a detective agency in Botswana. I have no idea how accurate the descriptions of Africa are, but it’s nice to read something that’s not about slavery, political upheavals, or kidnapping. It almost reads like a series of small events in her day rather than one uniform book with one mystery. It weaves back and forth nicely between her personal affairs and the cases she’s chooses to undertake. There’s no swearing or brutal violence. Everything can’t be all machete mauling and baby-making, Julie.

As I said, the easiest way to describe it is quaint. It reminds me of the old women who sell quilts at the flea market. Sure, she might be the grandmother of a pederast who turned her basement into The Last Chuck E. Cheese On The Left. Sure, she might be using the money to fund abortion clinic bombings. Sure, she might be secretly weaving Levitticus passages in knit and perl morse code in her craft projects. But, in the here and now, she’s a sweet old lady selling handmade goods and services. That’s what this novel is like. There are moments where the old-fashioned attitudes of female servitude and the scenes involving Precious’s husband Note that are horrifying, but delivered in the same sweet cadence that Smith uses when describing her making bush tea. It’s jarring but fascinating.

This is the next series getting televisionized by HBO, and having read the first novel, I’m kind of a little excited about it. Jill Scott is supposed to play Precious, and frankly she should be the go-to girl for casting zaftig black women. She’s been strong in just about every project she’s been in (which has been limited, so I’m anxious to see if she can carry a lead role), plus, she’s just a pleasant person.

This review is part of the Cannonball Read series. Details are here and the growing number of participants and their blogs are here.


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Comments

I'll agree that this series is quaint, but it didn't do it for me (and I love mysteries). I felt it was so intent on maintaining the folksiness of the characters, that it missed opportunities to intensify the plot.

Posted by: PaddyDog at February 9, 2009 10:08 AM

IMO - The No. 1 series is top tier Stuff White People Like.

My mother is a mysteries slob - her house is filled with paperbacks she has bought and finished, she exhausted local libraries long ago, and she rarely reads anything else. She knows Dick Francis like the she knows the childhoods of her children. But she won't touch AMS's No. 1 series. "It's too political."

What she really means is that it's too black. My wife reads them and her opinion matched Prisco's charming assessment.

Posted by: idiosynchronic at February 9, 2009 11:21 AM

I love the depictions of Bostwana life. True, it might be quaint but it's also an attack on modernity and the loss of traditional values and ways of doing things.

However, if you keep reading the series, you'll start to think Smith has a thing against beautiful, thin women - the antithesis of Mma Ramotswe. It seems to him all young, beautiful and slender women are vain, vapid and viciously intent on finding the perfect husband to marry and later neglect. This rant against women who are not of a "homely figure" becomes repetitive after a while. I could do without the blatant moralizing.

I agree with Paddy Dog, there's too much folksiness that the mystery itself is lacking any sort of mystery at all.

Posted by: Agony Aunt at February 9, 2009 12:08 PM

As a genre, I hate mystery novels. You know the old saying about sci-fi "sure 99% of it's crap, but 99% of everything is crap"? Well mystery novels are the exception. They're 199% crap. I also can't stand television procedurals.

My reaction to the person dieing in the hook? "Huh, that sucks" and then I change the channel or find another book.

That sounds terrifically harsh and cold when actually typed out on a computer screen. But hey, I'm at a job I hate, my coffee is cold and is raining in San Diego. Rain? I didn't move to San Diego for rain. I moved there for a girl so that she could dump me in a city I'd never been to before. But it was a sunny new city. I'm wearing a long sleeved shirt and a jacket. What is this, fricking Seattle or something? Fuck this weather, fuck mystery novels, and fuck Joe Buck.

Oh joy it's time for the monday morning status meeting. You know what my status is? Your flayed taint. That's my status. And my primary action item for the week is to piss down your soul's throat, Mr. Manager Boss Man, sir yes sir.

I want some sun and some fucking coffee.

Posted by: stipe42 at February 9, 2009 12:08 PM

I always thought these books looked soooo boring. Perhaps I wasn't being charitable.

Posted by: samantha t at February 9, 2009 12:27 PM

I like these books. Botswana indeed comes across as charming. It also has the highest AIDS infection rate in the world. But, to prevent you from becoming depressed, AMS protects you from this unfortunate fact.

Posted by: Keith at February 9, 2009 12:43 PM

I've never read the books, but I have seen the televison treatment, and you're right about Jill Scott. (She even sings in it, which is awesome).

Posted by: Tarn at February 9, 2009 12:47 PM

Looks like stipe42 has a case of the Mondays.

it's ok, so do we all, my friend. so do we all.

Posted by: Stella at February 9, 2009 1:41 PM

Probably the reason genre mystery readers don't care for the No.1 series is that they aren't genre mysteries. The detective agency is simply a plot device, and the plot doesn't drive these books. They're short stories, character sketches of Botswana (or at least McCall Smith's chosen aspect of Botswana) and the everyday lives of everyday people, seen through the eyes of Mma Ramotswe.

AMS's main achievement is Precious Ramotswe herself: all the opinions expressed in the books are very clearly hers. The Botswana AMS presents is her Botswana, that of a middle-aged, happy, fat, generally (but not utterly) traditional woman.

I don't see AMS's lack of emphasis on Botswana's AIDS crisis in sinister terms. It is present in the books--one of the characters refers to "this disease everyone is getting now"--not as a constantly defining circumstance of everyone's existence but as one of the background facts of daily life. Because Mma Ramotswe is intensely interested in daily life, and not the Issues Of The Nation. That would be a different book.

What I'm trying to say, very poorly, is that agendas and moralizing and politics in this series are facets of the characters', um, characters: notes of realism in stories that are largely, above all, realistic. Real people are not utterly separated from their prejudices, their opinions, their moral claims or the problems of their country, but neither are any of these things the driving force behind these books, and it's a mistake to put an agenda on McCall Smith that isn't there.

Posted by: Salieri2 at February 9, 2009 2:10 PM

I am a big fan of AMS, and I would definitely underline that these books, and his other series are not really genre mysteries, but very nuanced character studies that are a unique pleasure that kind of defies easy categorization. Also, for those who have read the entire series, AMS does deal with AIDS to some extent, as a main character, Precious's assistant Grace Makutsi nurses her brother, who is sick with the disease and eventually dies. There are also subplots involving an orphanage in the area, and it is ackowledged that many of the orphans lost their parents to AIDS.

Posted by: pugalug at February 9, 2009 2:46 PM

I always hated that these books included the first chapter of the next book. a) when you think you have another chapter to go, actually you don't b) you can't get closure on the one book and then wait to read the next, but you get dragged into the next book here and now, and then have to wait to read it (no way am I going to be manipulated into rushing out and buying the next book). Otherwise I think these are nice, gentle books well worth reading if I can get a free copy (library, friend).

Posted by: ChrisD at February 9, 2009 3:18 PM