Detective work as a cottage industry

kw: book reviews, fiction, mysteries, african setting

Some people like nothing better than to curl up with "a good murder mystery" and read half the night away. I prefer my mysteries without the murder, or at least those that downplay it. This makes Alexander McCall Smith an author I favor. I've read a few of his "No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" series with great enjoyment. His latest, Blue Shoes and Happiness, is as delightful as the rest.

Smith, a scotsman who grew up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), knows African culture, and African thinking and language habits, which gives his writing a unique charm. Not many writers have his skill to let us inside someone's skull without being either tedious or tawdry. Equally few can produce prose with so many compound sentences, prose which my Fog Index calculations peg at level 12, that is yet much more readable than the raw figures would predict. Bits of the Setswana language, such as the male and female honorifics Rra and Mma, make their way into the text, and become second nature as one reads.

The founder and proprieter of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Service, Precious Ramotswe, and her assistant, Grace Makutsi, carry out their work with persistence, humor, and the occasional minor scrap, amid the joys and fears of their everyday lives. They tend to use gentle nudges rather than direct conflict, though one confrontation that cannot be avoided is handled with great wisdom and fortitude.

Though the language is simple and direct, the characters in the novel are anything but simple. Their culture differs from my own, their language habits and thought habits even more, yet they are richly rounded, complex, believable people. Their good intentions often have unexpected results, as the man—another assistant detective—who takes action to alleviate a suspected curse, yet must allow an unusual animal to die as a result. Even the one really wicked person is seen in a primarily sympathetic light, yet is not let off the hook.

These novels are fun and heart-warming, wise and comforting. There are many mysteries in life. Here we find hope that a few people, here or there, can handle those puzzles that cause harm.