The Gentle Gaborone Gumshoe

The (first) No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency is probably one of the most charming detective novels ever. Set in Botswana, it featured Precious Ramotswe, 34 years old, with a small inheritance and no detective experience, but plenty of common sense. The novel and its sequels are often described as ‘deceptively simple’, written in straightforward prose that lets the characters, their personalities and culture take the foreground. There are no serial killers or violence of the sort that appears in most mystery novels: Mma Ramotswe’s clients generally want her to find a missing sibling, deal with marital problems or errant children or mysteries in their own pasts.

There is a gentle sameness to the subsequent novels which is both their strength and weakness. For many readers, the charm of the books lies in the kindness, generosity, and calm pace of life in Botswana, and in watching the slow changes in the lives of the characters. For many readers, too, it may be hard to tell one novel from another.

The nineteenth in the series, The Colors of All the Cattle, came out in 2018. In the intervening novels, Mma Ramotswe has married Mr JLB Maketoni, they have two adopted children, her assistant Grace Makutsi has been promoted to assistant director, they have two part-time helpers, and the agency continues to teeter on the edge of solvency. Perhaps in response to criticism that the early books painted too rosy a picture of Botswana, some of the novels included people dying of AIDS, thuggish criminals, men who abandoned their wives and children, and scheming women.

Alexander McCall Smith’s prose has remained peacefully unchanged through the course of these 20 years, and so has Mma Ramotswe’s personality. People still take many sentences to express and repeat a thought, and their listeners are still patient:

“Of course men eat, Mma. Everybody must eat. In particular,” said Mr. J.L.B.Maketoni, “they like to eat meat. Men are very keen on eating meat.”

“Mind you”, he ventured, “there are some men who do not eat meat.”

There are evocative descriptions of Botswana.

They followed, walking behind him on one of those almost invisible tracks that wound their way through the scrub bush behind Mma Potokwane’s office. These tracks are everywhere in the African bus, used by animals for the most part, known only to the creatures that had reason to go that way, petering out inexplicably, joining other tracks, forming a network of secret passages. The boy wore no shoes, but like all children who lived on the edge of the bush, his feet would be hardened to the rough texture of the ground.

A novel a year, though, along with three or four other series, makes for a rather intense writing career, and I’m afraid the books are showing some authorial exhaustion. The Colors of All the Cattle has some distinctly lazy plot points.

A reluctant Mma Ramotswe is being prodded into running for a local election by her friend, Mma Potokwane.

“Of course, if Mma Ramotswe doesn’t stand, then somebody else will get in.” She sighed. “That will be most unfortunate, in view of who the other candidate is likely to be”.

My heart sank. Surely McCall Smith was not going to drag out Violet Sephotho again? That single character has epitomized every evil in the string of novels: she cheats, she lies, she seduces men and breaks up marriages, she is behind shady business deals. And indeed, here she turns up once more. It’s as if the author can’t be bothered to come up with any new distinctive characters.

A lack of continuity is another unfortunate problem with this novel. In Chapter 5, Mma Makutsi suggests that her husband makes the decisions in her family.

“Out of the question”, said Mma Makutsi. “Phuti would not want me on the council. He doesn’t like that sort of thing.”

This is calmly accepted by everyone present, even though it does not at all match the Mma Makutsi we have known. But by Chapter 11, we see quite the opposite dynamic.

Phuti was not an overbearing man — in fact, he was the opposite. […] It would be a major humiliation [for Mma Makutsi to say] “I cannot do what you wanted me to do because my husband says I must not.” No, she would not put herself in that position: she simply would not.

Near the end of the book, we get the unavoidable (and to me, rather repetitive) paean to Mma Ramotswe’s father, Obed Ramotswe. He is “a man of egregious modesty”, ” his cattle were the finest in the country” — all familiar sentences to anyone who has read pretty much any of the previous books. And yet, in 2017 came The House of Unexpected Sisters, in which Mma Ramotswe discovered that her father had had an extramarital relationship and that she has a half-sister, unknown to her until now. There is not a hint of that startling revelation in this book, as if the author has forgotten it happened.

An occasional Ladies Detective Agency novel is a quick, calming, pleasant read, but it’s difficult not to feel that the series has run its course, and that the author is now phoning it in. The 7-episode TV series, though, starring Jill Scott and directed by Anthony Minghella, is still a charmer, and highly recommended.

The Colours of All the Cattle, by Alexander McCall Smith. (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency Series). Penguin Random House, 2018.