No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

In childhood, my grandfather used to tell me stories from Vedic mythology and I was fascinated. My grandmother, on the other hand, used to tell me stories from her experience. How once dacoits entered her house and she caught one of them! Or how my grandfather used to be respected as a doctor in all those villages where he was posted! While my grandfather’s stories served to inspire me to higher and more complex things in life, I always used to enjoy my grandmother’s stories more. Perhaps because they were truer to life; or perhaps because it was a story of my people.

No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency is one such story. A story written at our level. It’s not really about my people, I being an Indian and the story being set in Africa, but it feels like one. Alexander McCall Smith spins a story of humanity that sounds like a friend telling you a set of interesting incidents.

And what an interesting story it is! The No. 1 Ladies Detective agency is the story of Mma Ramotswe, Botswana’s first and only lady private detective. It’s the story of a woman wanting to do something unique and unconventional, not for the sake for being different, but for the sake of a belief that she would be good at it. Mma Ramotswe does not dazzle you with the brilliant logical reasoning of Sherlock Holmes, the Victorian manners of Ms. Marple or the psychological understanding of Hercule Poirot. Instead, she brings the art of detective-work to mere mortals like us with her sheer human warmth, honesty and a determination to do what’s right; with a generous dollop of common-sense thrown in. Her cases are not of wives’ poisoning their husbands, there is no Professor Moriarity plotting world domination; there’s just missing husbands, wayward daughters and lost children. The sort of cases which move detective work from the pages of fiction to real-life.

Alexander McCall Smith narrates the stories with the ease of an accomplished master. He makes you smile that knowing smile when you identify with what the protagonist is doing because you would have done the same thing. Not one but several times. And wins you over in the process. So much so that when the book ends, you feel like – “Is that it?” I am sure every reader will await the next book of the series with eagerness.

Recommendation – Go for it.

Rating - YYY
Ratings Guide – More the number of hearts, better the book. 5 is maximum.