The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
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Written by Alexander McCall Smith.
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Editorial Review (from Amazon.com)
This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith’s widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to “help people with problems in their lives.” Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husband, uncover a con man, and follow a wayward daughter. But the case that tugs at her heart, and lands her in danger, is a missing eleven-year-old boy, who may have been snatched by witchdoctors.The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency received two Booker Judges’ Special Recommendations and was voted one of the International Books of the Year and the Millennium by the Times Literary Supplement.
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Southern Girl thinks this book is Excellent.
A good friend loaned me this book to read. I wasn't all that excited to do so, and about 25 pages into it, I was complaining to my mother that I was going to have to come up with some way to tell L. that I really didn't want to read the rest of the books in the series. But I kept reading, because I felt I had to, and I ended up loving it. Might be my favorite book that I read that month. It's set in Botswana, and the main character is Precious Ramotswe, a large woman who drives a tiny white van and owns and runs the only ladies detective agency in the country, perhaps in all of Africa. I think what first put me off the book was its pace -- after reading so many suspenseful thrillers, where the action is fast-paced, it threw me a bit to find myself in Africa, where life is much slower, but I got used to it and eventually appreciated it. Precious is a great character...very intelligent, wise, and with a surprising sense of humor. She's sort of an African Agatha Christie...in fact, she uses Christie as a guide as she solves her cases. This is the first book in a series -- I'll definitely be searching out the others.