On my drive out to and around Massachusetts this past week, I listened to The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith, read by Lisette Lecat. This is the first in the highly popular series of novels set in Botswana and featuring Mma [*] Ramotswe, who opens a detective agency upon her father’s death.
[*] One-syllable honorific/title of polite address. Press your lips together on the drawn-out “mm” and pop them out on the “a”.
Lecat is a charming narrator who does an excellent job with all the different voices, and the book is a quite leisurely listen, much less demanding than Patrick O’Brian. Its portrait of life in Botswana is lovely.
Most of the time I enjoyed what I was hearing, but overall this failed to satisfy. Structurally, this is not a mystery novel, but a chronicle of an indeterminate time in the life of a private detective. It opens with a short description of one of her earlier cases, which failed to impress me: as I drove, I told Mma Ramotswe out loud, “That only worked because he was stupid, and you don’t seem to realize that.” Not an auspicious start.
Then it spends was a long (maybe two hours?) time on Mma Ramotswe’s biography: her father’s life in the South African mines and why he came home (an interesting first-person reminiscence); her raising by “the cousin” (who, despite wanting women to have a better lot and carefully educating the young Precious Ramotswe, is never given a name); and her disastrous marriage (which fails to ring psychologically true to me).
Then Mma Ramotswe opens her detective agency and another early case is described, which again struck me as less than plausible. Also at about this point is a chapter describing the abduction of a young boy. His father writes Mma Ramotswe looking for help, but she decides she can’t do anything. For the next couple of hours, nothing further happened on this front, and I was convinced that was all we were going to get on the topic, which seemed rather a cheat. That plot does come back, but I can’t really say it gets resolved: the concluding event is quite different than what the book led me to expect, and the reasons for this difference aren’t explained. Immediately after the event, there’s a similarly abrupt and unexpected personal development, and then the book just ends.
I wish I liked this better, because Lecat’s narration is so enjoyable, but I am distinctly underwhelmed.
I liked these books a lot better once I realized that they’re not mystery/detective novels, they’re cute, fluffy stories about life in Botswana. The detective stuff is only important in that it’s a Unusual Job, and as such, demonstrates that for all that she natters on about how the Old Botswana Ways are the Best Ways, Mma Ramotswe is a very unconventional person.
(It’d help if they weren’t shelved in the “mystery” section, but I gave up trying to understand publishers’ marketing schemes long ago.)
Pam: I agree they aren’t in the mystery genre. Regardless of genre, though, I still demand logic and a respect for my expectations as a reader, and I didn’t get it here.
They are very fluffy.
They are not mysteries, true, and that is certainly a misleading aspect of the way they’re marketed, but I love these books. They are reveries on life. Half the pleasure is in the slow, quiet prose.
Lucy, in that case, if you like audiobooks at all you might check out the Lecat narrations, as they do justice to the prose quite nicely IMO.