"Even Agatha Christie, two-dimensional as her writing is, has a worldview," a director of one of her plays told his cast, "and hers is, 'everyone's hiding something bad.'" The mystery novels of Alexander McCall Smith aren't really mysteries, and they're not really novels, and Smith's world view reverses the usual detective novel's: there's always more good to discover in a person.
Smith has now fashioned six books around his character named Precious Ramotswe, founder of Botswana's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. About forty years old, "traditionally built," and old-fashioned, "Mma" Ramotswe is the root of the series while characters branch off and grow from book to book. Crime is little more than a pretext for our time spent with the characters. In Smith's latest, In the Company of Cheerful Ladies, there's a mysterious intruder who steals trousers from Mma's clothes line, an embezzler from Johannesburg that she's been hired to find -- but these are forgotten for chapters at a time as we get involved in Mma Ramotswe's looming encounter with her Ex, and her secretary's enrollment in dance class, her husband's new apprentice, and the dangerous liaison of the young apprentice who quits.
The central characters are motivated often by a sense of duty and heartfelt gratitude, as they discover "precious" qualities in people whom they've judged by appearances. Smith's loosely tied plots give him room to have his characters ruminate on good old days, on modern manners, on dancing, on the almost-human character of automobile engines, on women's figures, and on tea. I heard the author in an interview say that he thinks of his fiction as "tea-drinking books," to be enjoyed and savored in a relaxed way.
Through these books, I have absorbed a mental impression of Botswana at odds with all the other images I have. Smith, a Scot, lived in Botswana for many years. Is he showing us the Africa he saw, or is it a highly selective vision? Checking the internet, I found Smith's own comment about that:
One or two people at signings usually ask me … am I ignoring the harsh realities of life … We have all become familiar with the images of boy soldiers and hungry children and cattle dying in dried-up river beds. We need to see all this … but we should also bear in mind the magnificent humanity and sheer decency [to be found in Africa]. There are legions of people trying to lead good lives - and doing so - in the face of difficulties which would floor most of us in no time at all ... The world which I try to portray in these books … seems to have resonated with a vast number of people who, I suppose, want to believe that the human spirit can transcend the horrors which confront us.
Smith, quoted in Frank Devine, "The World of Precious Ramotswe" in Quadrant Magazine, October 2003
Devine adds: "[From Botswana's] apparent hopelessness, McCall Smith has conjured a universe of light and cheer, of tranquillity, good manners and comic warmth."
The six Mma Ramotswe novels 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
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