The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

...Ramotswe would like to be the Miss Marple of the African continent. When her father dies, she does as he has asked – as any good daughter would – and sets up a business. Mma Ramotswe's business is not exactly the one her father had imagined, though. Precious sets up the very first ladies' private detective agency in Botswana. Its assets are modest: an office; an old white van; two desks; two chairs; a telephone and an underworked secretary. Unambitious ...
...she sets out to solve the cases of the missing boy, the missing husband, the stolen car, the wayward daughter and – her very first case - the father impostor. Do not expect a twisting, turning mystery story. Expect a sweet, heart-warming story about a wise, kind, sensible woman. McCall Smith's writing is fluid, accessible and highly evocative. There are some beautiful descriptions of Africa and its vast, often empty expanses. There is also a gentle, ...

jillmurphy 11.03.2004 · Read full review
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Review of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

...Alexander McCall Smith to work the following day, along with the second book in the series “Tears of the Giraffe”, knowing I’d probably get through them both on the journey. I’m not a big fan of detective stories as such. I’ve read a few Agatha Christies, and I like Ian Rankin, but that’s about as far as it goes. I shouldn’t have worried. Despite the title, this is less detective story and more beautifully crafted novel. What is instantly striking ...
...uses it to set up the The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency. Like so much in the novel, the name of the agency is exactly what it says it is: no more and no less: Precious is Botswana's only female detective. She has no experience, but she does have intuition, common sense, intelligence, and a personality that commands the respect and trust of those around her. Her initial needs seem sensible enough: an expert secretary, (in order for the agency to be ...

molelover 26.02.2004 · Read full review
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Review of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

...No. 1 Ladies´ Detective Agency´. The colours and the design have an ethno touch, the bush hut in the upper part and the crocodile in the lower part suggest Africa. Why is there an inlay in the beast´s belly containing a wrist watch? Mystery! Then the title; not short, not snappy, indicating maybe a slow-go, old-fashioned thriller. The blurbs on the back mention Botswana, a country which unto now hasn´t been on the world wide map of thrillers. Curiosity! ...
...stick-like creatures one saw in the advertisements.´ On the first page we learn that she had a detective agency with the assets: a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, an old typewriter, a teapot and three mugs - one for herself, one for the secretary, one for the client. In her opinion that´s enough, because what detective agencies rely on is ´human intuition and intelligence, both of which Mma Ramotswe had in abundance.´ I don´t ...

MALU 11.03.2004 · Read full review
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Review of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

...there are currently five in the series - have dominated both the bestsellers list and the bookshop shelves. Whilst in Waterstones at the weekend, I wryly noted that his books are heavily displayed in several sections of the shop. So i thought i would add to the current and excellent reviews of the first book in the series - the no. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. I have mixed feelings about this book and the series in general. Sometimes I agree with ...
...know a little bit about the author and where he or she is coming from. With Alexander McCall Smith it is clear that both his childhood and career have greatly influenced this series of books. About the Author Alexander McCall Smith was born in Zimbabwe in 1948, educated there and in Scotland. He became a law professor and returned to Africa to help set up a law school at the University of Botswana. He currently operates a double life as a prolific ...

littlem 06.04.2004 · Read full review
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Review of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

...heard quite a bit about The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, but had never really been interested in reading it. Then I saw a TV interview with the author Alexander McCall Smith. One thing he said really intrigued me. To paraphrase, he said people had enough worries in their lives, so he wrote books that were generally upbeat and where bad things didn't really happen. This surprised me. As a writer, I have been told many times that you need conflict ...
...to read the book and see what I thought to it. It isn't really a novel I would have chosen otherwise. It is set in Africa - specifically in Botswana - and I'm not very interested in that part of the world, favouring books set in Europe. The cover is bright and colourful and of an African design. I got the book free through www.readitswapit.co.uk but it is readily available from all the usual places. The cover price is £6.99 for the paperback version ...

KarenUK 04.12.2006 · Read full review
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Review of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

WHAT'S THIS THEN? ------------------------------ It's the first in a series of books by Alexander McCall Smith about Precious Ramotswe, the only female private detective in Botswana. She is, by Smith's admission, overweight, overbearing and underloved but in Africa and especially Botswana this is a look considered sexy and desirable by men. PLOT --------- Precious Ramotswe's father left her an inheritance and, being a liberal man, said that ...
...be proud of her. The first quarter of the book lays the foundations of Precious' upbringing. A whole chapter is dedicated to her father's working history in the gold mines of South Africa; another focuses on Precious' teenage years and a third concentrates on her doomed, violent marriage to a jazz trumpeter to whom she later became pregnant by. The baby died a few hours after birth. It is this torrid past that serves Ramotswe well in her detective ...

waynehorrigan 28.09.2004 · Read full review
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Review of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

...detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill. These were its assets: a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter. Then there was a teapot….And three mugs – one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need?” As we’re immediately told, still within this opening paragraph, what’s needed is human intuition and intelligence. ...
...Precious Ramotswe is the daughter of a miner, who managed to get away from the mines and raise cattle. Upon his death, she sold the cattle and set up a detective agency. The only lady private detective in the whole of Botswana has to be something special. What is really special about Precious is her ordinariness. She is simply a curious woman who sees how curiosity might pay its way. She talks to people and learns about them, in the general and the ...

hiker 26.06.2004 · Read full review
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Review of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

...Detective Agency book, I read the book while I was at work , it was left on top of the TV in our rest room and the red cover of the book drew my attention and then I began reading. The book was about a African lady reaching her goal in life. The female was called Precious Ramotswe. Ramotswe was borne alone while her father was working in Johannesburg as a miner , she met her father when she was couple months old and when she united with her father ...
...her lovely female cousin , the cousin taught Ramotswe how to count and how to read when she was two and she prepared Ramotswe to school before she even went to school, so when Ramotswe went to school she knew how to count and how to read. The reason the cousin spent most of her time with Ramotswe was because she could never have kids of her own and she treated Ramotswe as if it was her own child. The cousin then married a rich men and moved out from ...

gov25 14.05.2007 · Read full review
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Review of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

...when I was scanning through the top forty books for that particular week as a break from doing (not very well) the Guardian prize crossword. We were at my sister's and I asked if she had heard of this A McCall Smith who had five books in the top forty - all with very high sales. She immediately came up with three of the series of five featuring that beautiful character Mma Precious Ramotswe - the only lady private detective in Botswana. Described ...
...in her mid-thirties starts the agency with money left by her late father, Obed Ramotswe, who was born near Mahalapye in 1930 and died after a long illness in 1990. After working in South Africa in the diamond mines, he saved enough to start a cattle farm - a highly respected occupation in the Bechuanaland Protectorate as it was then. This greatly respected man brought up his only daughter with the aid of a lady cousin and after his death, she puts ...

BlackCatProm 09.11.2004 · Read full review
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Review of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

...a while now, intrigued by the idea of there being a No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Botswana and grateful for its raising the profile of redbush tea, which is a favourite of mine. It is the first in a series that will eventually amount to at least 11 (that's how much the author is contracted for), about 7 of which have been published, and is written by a white man in his late 50s, so the decision to have a black woman in her mid 30s as protagonist ...
...relatively 'different' decision). From the outset, I fell in love with Mma Ramotse (who is called Precious, but doesn't use the name any more). She is warm, funny, kind, generous and considerably overweight - the human equivalent to a chocolate cake just out of the oven. She sells her father's cattle after his death to buy a house and a business, as he wished. However, he probably didn't expect Mma Ramotse to get a couple of desks, a typewriter ...

DoubleFantasy11 07.08.2006 · Read full review
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Review of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

...its pace is gentle and the mysteries themselves are relatively simple. Their detection doesn't involve scientific or technological methods, just common sense and female intuition. The main character is Precious Ramotswe - a lady from Botswana, who has established the "No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency." This is the only detective agency in Botswana and Precious is very proud to be the proprietor of it. The story involves a series of cases which Precious ...
...involves the investigation of somebody's father - is he the genuine article? Using straight-forward methods, Precious quickly gets to the bottom of this mystery and goes on to solve other cases involving a stolen car and a missing husband. This book is very easy reading. I personally found it charming and enjoyable. Unlike other mystery novels, it was simple to understand and you didn't need to re-read a chapter to understand certain elements of ...

VerySpecialOne 30.11.2005 · Read full review
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Review of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

The ladies I work with have been raving about Alexander Mcall Smith for sometime so I decided to give it a go. It's one of those books where you can pick up a decent second hand condition copy for £1 plus p&p on Amazon so I duly ordered my copy, forgot about it and landed on the doorstep a few days later. The book follows the cases and private life of Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's only female Private Detective. Left a large amount of money and a ...
...dies she styles herself as the Miss Marple of Botswana and duly sets up in the improbable business of being a Private Detective. The story follows the short period of her life following the set up of her business and is interspersed with the details of cases she deals with, such as the father who suspects (I would tell you whether he is correct or not but that would ruin it!) his daughter is seeing a boy, or the Doctor whose performanceis somewhat ...

vipper_of_vip 30.08.2005 · Read full review
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Review of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

...hold your attention right till the end (and into the first chapter of its follow-up Tears of the Giraffe if you happen to own the 2003 Abacus paperback edition). I suppose it is mainly due to the relaxed way the story or stories are told. You cannot help getting into that same relaxed mode. Arguably nothing really happens, crime-wise apart from a bit of adultery here, a bit of muti there. Why don't people die? Have you noticed how many times the ...
...As if the great nation was obsessed by death. But not in Alexander Mc Call Smith's Bostwana. You do wonder at one time if something sinister has indeed happened. However it would have been a mistake, I believe, if the writer had gone down a different path as the whole tone of the book would have been changed, creating an imbalance of sorts. But if the lack of gripping stuff (as in violence and murder) puts you off then just read the book for its ...

gijoe1974 12.03.2008 · Read full review
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Review of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

...country which moves slowly under the heat of the sun. Precious Ramotswe has decided to become a lady detective the only one in Botswana. She's an astute and assertive lady who gets answers through unorthodox means which entertain the reader. Her character is well formed, the gentle humour is very African, and on the nail, as the author has spent time there. The book divides into and introduction of the characters, and individual chapters of events ...
...the way the story is presented, and is very accessable, although I do think an appreciation of African culture is required to enjoy the book to the full and understand all the nuances of phrase and humour. Not a long book, but if you like it you will surely go on to the next in the series, a good different read!! ...

saleshi 09.04.2005 · Read full review
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Review of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

As the first in a series of books, the Ladies No 1 Detective Agency could have spent a long time setting up scenes and situations, but rather than frustrate the reader, McCall-Smith gets atraight down the business, and I was engaged in this book within pages, and the could not put it down! Mma Ramotswe is a lovable character who sets up her own detective agency with money she inherits on the death of her father. She uses her female intuition and ...
...their problems and mysteries. The cases are varied, and provide entertainment in themselves, and function almost as short stories within the larger narrative, as they tend to stand alone. They weave into the overall plot, however, to add to the picture McCall Smith creates of Africa. I don't want to spoil the plot by telling you too much of what happens. Suffice it to say that there are some cases that take Mma Ramotswe on longer trips, where a ...

electricfrog5 15.05.2005 (12.06.2005) · Read full review
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Review of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith