Clarksville, TN – If you are tired of watching the latest murder, robbery, sexual assault, wreck, and/or other horror on the nightly news, it’s time you discovered the books written by Scottish writer Alexander McCall Smith. No, you aren’t going to be reading about car chases or social media disasters or aliens.
What you are going to read about are characters with human emotions, deep thinking processes, dignity, kindness and morality—not the preachy kind—just genuine feeling for whether or not choices are the right ones and if a mistake is made, how to deal with it and move on.
Sound like something you can handle? Then you have a number of choices of book series from which to choose.
Perhaps the best known series begins with No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. Others in the series are Tears of the Giraffe, Morality for Beautiful Girls, The Kalahari Typing School for Men, The Full Cupboard of Life, In the Company of Cheerful Ladies, Blue Shoes and Happiness, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, The Miracle of Speedy Motors, Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, The Double Comfort Safari Club, The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection, The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon, and The Handsome Man’s De Luxe Cafe.The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series features Precious Ramotswe, the only female detective in Botswana (Africa). She doesn’t take murder cases (although on a rare occasion, one character was eaten by a crocodile!), just problems that ordinary people have with their spouses or neighbors.
Mma Ramotswe started her detective agency in Gabarone with money she earned after selling her father’s cattle after his death. Cattle are highly valued in Botswana and the herd brought a good price that enabled her to buy both a house and a building for her business. The sign outside the agency on the Lobatse Road read, “FOR ALL CONFIDENTIAL MATTERS AND ENQUIRIES. SATISFACTION GUARANTEED FOR ALL PARTIES. UNDER PERSONAL MANAGEMENT.” Princess proved to be a good detective because she was a good woman with plenty of common sense and she also referred to a detective manual that she ordered through the mail.
One important part of the detective agency was Mma Grace Makutsi who passed the general typing and secretarial examinations with an average grade of 97 percent at the Botswana College of Secretarial and Office Skills. Mma Makutsi’s grades were of great pride at the agency and she was eventually promoted to associate detective. She wore very thick glasses that tended to fog over when she became upset, but she was most efficient at all her tasks.
The pace of the plots in these books is not hurried but reveals throughout the pace of life in Botswana where Alexander McCall Smith taught law at the University of Botswana. Smith was born in Rhodesia of Scottish parents and spent his childhood in Africa. He earned a law degree at the University of Edinburgh where he later taught medical law. He also taught in Italy and the United States and was the author of thirty children’s books before rising to international prominence with No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.
He writes several other series of books as well.
Isabelle Dalhousie, a philosopher who is editor/owner of The Review of Applied Ethics. She lives in Edinburgh and investigates all types of problems including a murder she witnessed. She is the central character in many of the books in the series called The Sunday Philosophy Club series, the first book having that title. Others in the series are Friends, Lovers, Chocolate followed by The Right Attitude to Rain, The Careful Use of Compliments, The Comfort of Saturdays, The Lost Art of Gratitude, The Charming Quirks of Others, The Forgotten Affairs of Youth, The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds, and The Novel Habits of Happiness.
To date, Corduroy Mansions, The Dog Who Came in from the Cold, and A Conspiracy of Friends are the three books in the wildly popular Corduroy Mansions series. The eccentric characters live in London on various floors of a crumbling apartment building. The fictional address has now been listed by the post office!
As if this extensive list of titles was not enough to choose from, here are others that do not have additional partners: Precious and the Missing Lion, The Forever Girl, The 2½ Pillars of Wisdom, Unusual Uses for Olive Oil, Mma Ramotswe’s Cookbook, La’s Orchestra Saves the World, Precious and the Puggies, Trains and Lovers, Fatty O’Leary’s Dinner Party, A Work of Beauty: Alexander McCall Smith’s Edinburgh, Precious and the Monkeys, and Emma.
Amazingly, almost all of Smith’s books are available as audio books and your local library carries nearly everything he writes as soon as it is available.
If you are looking for a delightful summer path of enjoyment, choose whichever series or book that appeals to you and get started on an escape from the travails of life. By choosing a book by Alexander McCall Smith, you won’t be sorry!