{"id":338,"date":"2005-06-27T22:04:00","date_gmt":"2005-06-28T02:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=338"},"modified":"2005-06-27T22:04:00","modified_gmt":"2005-06-28T02:04:00","slug":"smith_alexander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2005\/06\/smith_alexander\/","title":{"rendered":"Smith, Alexander McCall: (01) The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (audio)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

On my drive out to and around Massachusetts this past week, I listened to The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency<\/cite> by Alexander McCall Smith, read by Lisette Lecat<\/strong>. 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. <\/p>\n

[*] One-syllable honorific\/title of polite address. Press your lips together on the drawn-out “mm” and pop them out on the “a”. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>, and you don’t seem to realize that.” Not an auspicious start.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>); and her disastrous marriage (which fails to ring psychologically true to me). <\/p>\n

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<\/em>. Immediately after the event, there’s a similarly abrupt and unexpected personal development, and then the book just ends.<\/p>\n

I wish I liked this better, because Lecat’s narration is so enjoyable, but I am distinctly underwhelmed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Smith, Alexander McCall: (01) The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (audio)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8,118],"tags":[388],"class_list":["post-338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mystery","category-no-1-ladies-detective-agency","category-single-narrator-audio","tag-smith-alexander-mccall"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}