Monday, June 28, 2010

Going to Botswana - Reading Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series


Some time back I got heavily into reading crime fiction… I like reading general pulp fiction, but ‘pure’ crime fiction was something I started reading seriously only recently…my friend Vinod was instrumental in introducing me to Elmore Leonard’s novels, and now I am a confirmed fan…I bought a couple of Indian crime fiction novels (The Englishman’s Cameo, The Curious Case of 221B) and liked reading them…Ian Rankin was in India recently and his interviews with a couple of ‘powerful’ people appeared in newspapers here and I was intrigued…I hadn’t read any of his novels…and as luck would have it when Best Books put up their next exhibition at YMCA Secunderabad, I managed to get the first novel in the Inspector Rebus series, Knots and Crosses…and I also got about 5 more Elmore Leonard novels…and in between all these I read Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy (highly recommended!!!) … and so, I was hooked…and wanted to read other writers of similar ‘criminal’ persuasions…the name Alexander McCall Smith also came up while searching for crime fiction authors and the search said that he had written a series of crime novels set in Botswana…starting with The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency … I thought I’d give the first one a try … and as luck would have it, I was in Bangalore some months back and there is this mall near my brother-in-law’s house which had a bookstore called Depot … I was delighted to find that all books there are being sold at 50% discount … something like a stock clearance sale … I went in and saw The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency on the rack and decided to pick it up…and then I saw two other books in the same series…Tears of the Giraffe and The Kalahari Typing School for Men…the discount being offered tempted me and I bought all the three…

I started reading the first one … I thought it’d be a tough cloak and dagger high adrenaline hide and seek between detective and criminal…and I was surprised...nothing of that kind…if at all one can use the word ‘gentle’ for a crime fiction novel…it should be used for this…it tells the story of Precious Ramotswe, who sets up a detective agency in Gabarone, the capital of Botswana … Precious Ramotswe tells her story of how she decided to set up the detective agency (the first in Botswana, mind you) and what attracted her to this profession … and a lot about traditional Botswanian way of life, their morals, and how these things are slowly changing…She says she loves Botswana and she loves Africa and wants to do something to solve the little problems that people have to make them live easier…how her father was one of the most upright and good persons who followed the traditional way of life and taught her the positive values … her failed marriage to a musician … and all these constitute the major portion of the first novel … and the initial skepticism among the local people about how a woman could fancy herself to be a detective and whether she could solve any problems at all … the cases she gets initially are ‘simple’ in nature, cheating husbands, car thefts, petty crime…and she solves them…and in the subsequent novels, the crime scene does get grittier, and slightly more dangerous than in the previous cases…

But most interesting are the people that inhabit her world…the kind and gentle Mr J L B Matekoni, mechanic and owner of Speedy Motors, B K, the beautician who owns the Last Chance Hair Salon, Grace Makutsi, the nervous and worried secretary of the Detective Agency, who has the distinction of scoring 97% marks (the highest in the history of the country) in her Diploma offered by the Botswana Secretarial College, and who also always laments that despite her distinction she was never offered any jobs at offices because she did not look or behave like many other young girls…Cephas Buthelezi (who grandly calls himself Ex-CID, Ex-New York, Ex-cellent!!), who sets up a rival detective agency, Satisfaction Guaranteed Detective Agency…Note Mokoti, the jazz trumpeter, who marries Precious Ramotswe and then abuses her physically and from whom she separates…”Two Shots” Pulani, the local impresario, who organizes the Botswana Beauty and Integrity contest…and many many more…

I did not realize that I enjoyed reading the novel…no crime would be reported to the police because Precious Ramotswe believed in solving problems and allowing people to realize their wrongdoings and sort out the emotional fallouts themselves… soon I was reading the second and the third novels … and wanting more … and sure enough, when I visited Bangalore, I visited Depot again, and happily for me, I found two more novels of the series which were not there when I visited it first…Morality for Beautiful Girls and In the Company of Cheerful Ladies…and finished them soon enough…

Above all, Precious Ramotswe takes us on a tour of modern Botswana and one begins to almost smell the soil and become part of Precious Ramotswe’s world…go, read them and Enjoyment Guaranteed…

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