Precious Ramotswe sells some of her late father’s cattle, buys a house on Zebra Drive and opens an office in the capital. At 34 she is the only lady detective in the country. She has a tiny white van, a secretary and a copy of The Principles of Private Detection by the fictional Clovis Andersen. This mystery novel was published in 1998 by Polygon in Edinburgh, in a first print run of just 1,500 copies, according to the author. It became the first of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, which has now sold millions.
Can You Summarize the Plot of Book 1?
The novel starts with a long look back. Her father, Obed, worked in the South African mines and built up a herd of cattle. Precious grew up in a village north of the capital. She made a painful first marriage to a trumpet player, Note Mokoti, who beat her, and their baby lived only five days. When Obed dies, she uses his legacy to open the first detective agency in Botswana.
The book moves between a number of cases and her personal life. The cases come one after another, like stories in a collection. She is hired to track down a missing husband. She exposes a con man, follows a wayward daughter for a worried father and looks into an insurance claim. One client wants to know whether a man who has turned up at her door is really her father. Running through the book is a darker thread: an eleven-year-old boy has gone missing, and he may have been taken by witch doctors. Part of that story draws on a real 1994 ritual murder in her home village, Mochudi. We will not say how the case ends.
Precious Ramotswe and the Main Characters
- Mma Precious Ramotswe, a woman of traditional build, as she says herself, and the founder of the agency;
- Mma Grace Makutsi, her secretary, who scored a record 97 per cent at the Botswana Secretarial College;
- Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, the gentle proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors and an old friend of her family;
- Obed Ramotswe, her late father, whose story opens the book.
Later books add the apprentices at the garage, the foster children and Grace’s rise from secretary to partner.
Our Review: A Gentle Book About Detective Work and Human Nature
Alexander McCall Smith’s first book in the series is less a whodunit than a portrait of a woman and a country. Detective Precious Ramotswe’s method is intuition and intelligence: she watches people, listens, drinks bush tea and trusts her sense of right and wrong. The prose is plain and warm, and the humour is dry and kind. The country comes across as proud and peaceful, seen with affection by someone who knows it well.
The weakness is the one critics have always named. The mysteries are small and often solved without suspense, and the structure is episodic. Publishers Weekly praised the novel’s leisurely pace as part of its charm, but if you want a tight puzzle, this is not it. If you want to feel better about people, it is hard to beat. The book also deals plainly with domestic violence and the loss of a baby, and the missing-boy thread is grim.
Is It the Best Investigator Book? What Critics Say
No book can claim that title, but this one has a strong record. The publisher reports two Booker Judges’ Special Recommendations and a place among the Times Literary Supplement’s international books of the year. Publishers Weekly called it a little gem, and English-language sales of the series passed 20 million by 2009. In the US it spread by word of mouth, through independent booksellers, before a major publisher picked it up in 2002.
Who is the best female detective? Readers will argue forever. The New York Times Book Review called Mma Ramotswe the Miss Marple of Botswana. The Christian Science Monitor put the series first in its list of detective series set in foreign places. In 2004 the author was named Author of the Year at the British Book Awards. The same year he won the CWA Dagger in the Library, both for this charming series.
What Makes the Detective Agency Series Unique: Setting, Tone and Themes
The setting is Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, with trips out to the villages. The tone is unhurried and good-humoured. The series looks at tradition and modern life and at women’s independence in a world run by men. It also touches on faith and secret witchcraft, and on the mines that took fathers away from home. The heroine herself came from a real moment. The author saw a cheerful, well-built woman chasing a chicken around a yard and thought she deserved a book.
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Books in Order
Each novel follows on from the one before, so read them in order. There are 27 so far:
- The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (1998)
- Tears of the Giraffe (2000)
- Morality for Beautiful Girls (2001)
- The Kalahari Typing School for Men (2002)
- The Full Cupboard of Life (2004)
- In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (2004)
- Blue Shoes and Happiness (2006)
- The Good Husband of Zebra Drive (2007)
- The Miracle at Speedy Motors (2008)
- Tea Time for the Traditionally Built (2009)
- The Double Comfort Safari Club (2010)
- The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party (2011)
- The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection (2012)
- The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (2013)
- The Handsome Man’s De Luxe Café (2014)
- The Woman Who Walked in Sunshine (2015)
- Precious and Grace (2016)
- The House of Unexpected Sisters (2017)
- The Colours of All the Cattle (2018)
- To the Land of Long Lost Friends (2019)
- How to Raise an Elephant (2020)
- The Joy and Light Bus Company (2021)
- A Song of Comfortable Chairs (2022)
- From a Far and Lovely Country (2023)
- The Great Hippopotamus Hotel (2024)
- In the Time of Five Pumpkins (2025)
- The Big Cats Dance Party (September 2026)
No 28th book has been announced yet.
Has It Been Adapted for Television or Radio?
Yes, both. The BBC and HBO made a TV version filmed in Botswana. Its feature-length pilot was directed by Anthony Minghella, who wrote it with Richard Curtis, and aired in March 2008, days after Minghella’s death. Six episodes followed in 2009, with Jill Scott as Mma Ramotswe, Anika Noni Rose as her secretary and Lucian Msamati as the mechanic. It won a Peabody Award but was not renewed. On BBC Radio 4, the author himself dramatised the books in 35 episodes between 2004 and 2019.
Who Is Alexander McCall Smith?
He was born in 1948 in Bulawayo, in what was then Southern Rhodesia, and studied law in Edinburgh. In 1981 he went back to southern Africa to help set up the law school at the University of Botswana and to teach there. He became professor of medical law at Edinburgh University and lives in Scotland. Besides the series by Alexander McCall Smith that made his name, he writes the Isabel Dalhousie novels and 44 Scotland Street. His Detective Varg books are set in Sweden.
Quick Facts
| Title | The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency |
|---|---|
| Author | Alexander McCall Smith |
| Series | Book 1 of 27 |
| First published | 1998, Polygon, Edinburgh (US: Anchor, 2002) |
| Setting | The capital and the villages of Botswana |
| Sleuth | Mma Ramotswe, founder of the agency |
| Audiobook | Unabridged, narrated by Lisette Lecat, 8 h 10 min (Recorded Books, 2003); abridged UK reading by Adjoa Andoh, 5 h 51 min (on Audible) |
| TV | BBC/HBO, 2008–2009, with Jill Scott |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a cookbook?
Yes. Mma Ramotswe‘s Cookbook by Stuart Brown, with a foreword by the author, came out in 2009.
Do I need to read the books in order?
It helps. The cases stand alone, but the characters’ lives move on from book to book.
What should I read next?
For a kind detective who listens before he judges, try Still Life. For the original village sleuth Mma Ramotswe is compared to, read The Murder at the Vicarage.