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Title: The Kalahari Typing School for Men (No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency) by ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH ISBN: 1-4000-3180-X Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 09 March, 2004 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.74 (34 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A hugely popular cozy mystery series
Comment: Precious Ramotswe, founder of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Botswana is faced with several problems in this, the fourth and latest volume of the international best-selling series by Mr. Smith. First of all, Mma. Ramotswe has competition when another detective agency comes into town run by a man who feels women are second rate. His credentials are a bit suspect. I.e.. He claims to have had detective training in some large cities including New York. Second, her assistant, Mma. Makutsi, has started a typing school for men and has met a wonderful man who claims to love her. The question is who is he and is he trustworthy. These problems will all be solved prior to the ending of this delightful little novel.
The term "cozy" was made for this type of book. There is no bloodletting or violence of any kind. It is purely character driven and what charming and polite characters they are! The books are slight enough that we get to know the characters, the problems they must solve, and the resolution before the book ends in a length perfect for one sitting. I fully understand the popularity of these books. They remind the reader of the Golden Age of mystery fiction.
Rating: 5
Summary: Three cheers for McCall Smith and his fabulous book!
Comment: Western writers usually enter Africa by way of a protagonist who belongs to their own culture (missionary, functionary, explorer, soldier, mail-order bride) and is venturing into unknown territory. So it is one of the mysteries --- and miracles --- of recent fiction that a Scotsman named Alexander McCall Smith should have created a character like Precious Ramotswe, the full-bodied, clear-headed, absolutely captivating investigator who inhabits all four of his Botswana novels: THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY, TEARS OF THE GIRAFFE, MORALITY FOR BEAUTIFUL GIRLS, and now, THE KALAHARI TYPING SCHOOL FOR MEN.
Mma Ramotswe (in traditional Botswana culture, honorifics are always used; it seems rude not to do so in the review as well) has had a tough life: married to an abusive jazz musician, she loses her baby and then her beloved father. But she finds her vocation: she sets up the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and is soon attracting clients. She also acquires a fiancé, garage owner Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, two orphans, and a sidekick, Mma Makutsi, who received a grade of 97 percent on her exams at the Botswana Secretarial College. You don't have to be familiar with the first three books to follow the action in KALAHARI --- McCall Smith is careful to supply context for the first-time reader --- but I think it's better to discover them in order. Not only do you gradually develop a sense of Mma Ramotswe and her life on Zebra Drive (yep, that's the name of her street), but you also become deeply fond of Botswana (this is important since, to the average Westerner, Africa is still a "dark" --- that is, unknown --- continent). These wise, charming books leave you feeling washed clean and peaceful, with an expanded sense of humanity.
Although KALAHARI and the other books are technically mysteries, plot is not the main thing here. There are interlocking events --- a man across town opens a new detective agency; Mma Makutsi starts a typing school for men; Mma Ramotswe solves a case or two --- but there is little real tension or suspense. What keeps you reading is the wonderful writing: pure, economical, funny, utterly lacking in condescension. The evocation of Botswana is often lyrical (its quiet roads, its ubiquitous cattle). Sometimes the stories seem fable-like, as if McCall Smith is telling them around a campfire in the deep African night. This impression is reinforced by the repetition of certain phrases. Mma Ramotswe has a "tiny white van" and is "traditionally built." She believes in "the old Botswana morality" --- a phrase that covers everything from knocking and calling out "Ko Ko" before you enter someone's house to the deeper sense of courtesy and integrity that is being overwhelmed by modern life.
It is one of the many ironies of this wonderful book that Mma Ramotswe and her cohorts, despite their professed yearning for traditional values, are actually the smartest, most progressive people around. Because they are authentic and honest and guided by common sense rather than greed or pride, they make phony modernists like the proprietor of the rival Satisfaction Guaranteed Detective Agency look like idiots (the scene in which Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi pay him a visit is priceless). Indeed, THE KALAHARI TYPING SCHOOL FOR MEN, more than the others in the series, is very much occupied with gender; it has a feminist streak a mile wide.
Consider the characters McCall Smith gives us: the entrepreneurial Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi; the imposing head of the orphan farm, Mma Potokwani, who wangles free products and services from everyone ("It would take a degree of courage that few possessed to turn [her] down"); Mma Tsolamosese, whose daughter has died of AIDS and who is caring for her doomed grandchild with dignity and compassion; and Mma Boko, who is head of a local branch of the Botswana Rural Women's Association but refuses to run for office because "all [men] do is talk about money and roads and things like that. ... We women have more important things to talk about."
With sly humor and wry tolerance, the novel captures that conspiratorial sense among women --- in any culture --- that men are not quite up to their standards (Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni being the exception, of course): "The trouble with men," muses Mma Ramotswe, "was that they went about with their eyes half closed for much of the time. ... That was why women were so good at tasks which required attention to the way people felt. Being a private detective, for example. ..." Or Mma Makutsi, commenting on the essays written by her typing-school students: "All of life seemed to be laid out before her: mothers, wives, football teams, ambitions at work, cherished motor cars; everything that men liked." And when Mma Ramotswe says her foster son is going through "a difficult patch," a friend replies dryly: "Boys do go through times like that. It can last for fifty years."
McCall Smith, it turns out, was born in what is now Zimbabwe (then called Southern Rhodesia) and taught law at the University of Botswana, but those facts alone hardly explain his astounding ability to enter the soul of a woman as well as the soul of Africa. He, like Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, must be one of the exceptions, a good man. He is certainly an imaginative and observant one. Somehow he manages to communicate the specific feel and spirit of Botswana while also creating characters that transcend the barriers of geography, culture, and gender.
McCall Smith is writing a fifth Precious Ramotswe book, according to his publisher, and has started a new series featuring another lady detective, Isabel Dalhousie (Scottish father, American mother). I can't wait.
--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman
Rating: 5
Summary: Ten used typewriters for bait
Comment: The Detective Agency is in a bind. Income from clients isn't matching costs of operations. Even the merging of facilities by moving the Agency to the site of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors and elevating Mma Grace Makutsi to Assistant Manager [along with her already being Assistant Detective] hasn't increased the cash flow. Now, in the midst of business and personal crises, a new detective agency is established in Gaborone. It's run, of course, by [shudder!] a man! And what a man! Cephas Buthelezi is a name commanding respect. Whether this man is an inheritor of Zulu traditional power and deserves deference remains to be seen. Will he corral all of the Ladies' Detective Agency's potential clients?
Compounding the business stress are the personal issues. Precious Ramotswe, founder of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, has become a foster parent of two orphans. The girl, confined to a wheelchair, has been subjected to schoolmate taunting. Her brother has developed new and disturbing behaviour, typified by the killing of a hoopoe bird, unheard of in Botswana. Beyond the children's problems is the ongoing, but not fulfilled, engagement of Precious and Mr J.L.B. Matekone. Will they ever wed?
More to the point of this tale is Mma Makutsi's spinsterhood. As the highest scoring graduate of her typing school, McCall Smith makes her more intellectual than desirable. Yet these very attributes should make her a prime catch for men following Botswanan tradition. And in Mma Makutsi the author shows how these traditions should be respected. Although her "typing school for men" [using ten used typewriters] is created to help the issue of cash flow, is there a more subliminal motive? As it happens, much of the story pivots on this question.
There is, as there must be, a "case" to be solved. As with all McCall Smith's tales of Mma Ramotswe's business, it departs from any typical mystery novel. A hesitant man calls on her services with a special requirement. There was a crime, perhaps two, but it was long ago. The victims may not be alive or perhaps far away. Precious is charged with finding them for a unique resolution to long distant events. As always, she rises to challenge with common sense, a bit of personality manipulation, and effective negotiation. As always, she does it all with tact, forbearance and skill, leaving none hurt or regretful.
McCall Smith's narrative skills in weaving events and characters have few peers. Although it's doubtful Precious Ramotswe is a "typical" Botswanan, she's a character worth emulating. The author follows the modern pattern of making men either arrogant or weak, but that, unfortunately, drives sales these days. Perhaps when Mr J.L.B. Matekone emerges from his doldrums, McCall Smith will be able to restore some balance. One hopes it doesn't take too many books to achieve that. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
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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: 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: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (Today Show Book Club #8) by Alexander McCall Smith ISBN: 1400034779 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 06 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: The Full Cupboard of Life : More from the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH ISBN: 0375422188 Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 20 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Boxed Set by Alexander McCall Smith ISBN: 0679789758 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 28 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.85 |
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