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Title: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (Today Show Book Club #8) by Alexander McCall Smith ISBN: 1-4000-3477-9 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 06 February, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (120 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Not just a great detective book--a great book, period!
Comment: I came to this book after having had many, many people recommend it to me. When I get that kind of Invasion-of-the-Body-Snatchers thumbs-up, I tend to get stubborn, suspecting a mass-marketing push of some sort. The more fool me. In this case, the price for my stubbornness definitely came off my own hide.
Fortunately, my niece's plane was late to land a couple of weeks ago, so I picked this up at the airport bookstore and started to read it. I was immediately hooked.
As you can read above, this amazing volume follows the exploits of Mma Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's first female detective. We watch her set up her office, solve her first few cases, and eventually unlock a mystery that peers into the dark (and banal) heart of human evil. But to call this a detective novel is almost a disservice to Mr. Smith's wonderful book. Mysteries, in general, fall into a very few, well-established sub-genres: the Cozy, the Hardboiled Detective, the Police Procedural, the Thriller. Every one of these types has a very clear set of standard gimmicks--tropes--that let you know what's going on. Even books that mix genres (like Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden novels which mix fantasy with hardboiled, or Laura Joh Rowland's Sano Ichiro series and Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta books, both of which tend to shift from procedural to thriller) tend to show great respect for the genre. But this book seems to ignore the traditional forms of the detective novel altogether. It is, first and formost, a novel, a work of literary fiction. Its main subject is the soul of the people of Botswana, as viewed through the lens of Mma Ramotswe herself. Yes, she solves mysteries. But it is more in the fashion of Solomon or Judge Ooka than Sherlock Holmes or Sam Spade. She is a master of the human soul. She understands people, and why they do the silly things they do, and so she inevitably manages to uncover the answers to questions that others can't seem to solve.
Part of the beauty of the book is that Smith's deceptively simple storytelling style all but forces the reader to fall in love with Precious. She is so admirable, so endearing that you have no choice. You know she's going to solve the case, and that, as long as she is working on the problem, everything's going to be all right. By way of example--and I'm not going to give away too much here--about half way through the book, an incident occurs that is, on many levels, quite horrific. Smith handles the scene beautifully, simply and terrifyingly. It is the sort of scene that has broken my suspension of disbelief in several previous thrillers. Yet, because of Smith's style and Mma Ramotswe's charm and perseverance, I felt enough trust to continue on. That trust was rewarded. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency solved the case in most satisfactory fashion.
For me, knowing of southern Africa mostly through novels and horrific news reports, it was a joy to get to know Botswana on so personal and believable a level.
Rating: 2
Summary: just ok
Comment: This book was just okay. Very slow moving, not riveting or fast-paced at all. Good for a slow day on the porch. It will not keep you up at night page-turning that's for sure. The main storyline was predictable. The good thing was that it was short.
Rating: 4
Summary: 1
Comment: This would be such a great book if it was the no# 1 ladies brothel club and everyone got naked.
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Title: Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith ISBN: 1400031354 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 03 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Morality for Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith ISBN: 1400031362 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 12 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: The Kalahari Typing School for Men : More from the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith ISBN: 037542217X Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 29 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd ISBN: 0142001740 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 28 January, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown ISBN: 0385504209 Publisher: Doubleday Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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