Summer Detective Novels

You know summer is in full swing when the rapidly diminishing pile of books to read gives you a case of abibliophobia (fear of having nothing to read). Most recently I’ve finished Morality for Beautiful Girls and The Kalahari Typing School for Men, books 3 and 4 in Alexander McCall Smith’s series of detective novels.

If you haven’t discovered these books yet, summer is the perfect time. The main character - Precious Ramotswe - is sort of a fat and jolly version of Miss Marple who lives in Gaborone, Botswana. In the first book - The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - she goes against any conventional notion of what an unmarried woman should do, spending the money she got from selling her late father’s cattle to set up a Ladies’ Detective Agency.

Although the books are technically mysteries, plot is not the main thing. Interlocking events provide mild tension and suspense. What keeps you reading is the wonderful writing: pure, economical, funny, utterly lacking in condescension. The evocation of Botswana is often lyrical (its quiet roads, its ubiquitous cattle). Sometimes the stories seem fable-like, as if McCall Smith is telling them around a campfire in the deep African night.

It is one of the many ironies of these wonderful books that Mma Ramotswe and her cohorts, despite their professed yearning for traditional values, are actually the smartest, most progressive people around. Because they are authentic and honest and guided by common sense rather than greed or pride, they make phony modernists look like idiots.

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