A woman who also happens to be a detective
The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series (The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency; Tears of the Giraffe; Morality for Beautiful Girls; The Kalahari Typing School for Men; The Full Cupboard of Life)
Alexander McCall Smith
1999-2003
Abacus and Polygon (UK), Random House (USA)
Reviewed by Richard Bartlett
When picking up a novel about a woman private detective set in Botswana, and written by a Rhodesian-born Scotsman, one does so with immense trepidation. So it was with The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency. Yet after having read the book, and the four others in the series, it is with immense humility that this reviewer must apologise to Alexander McCall Smith for such prejudice. He writes passionately, not patronisingly, of Africa.
I admit to picking up the first novel in the series of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency more out of duty than out of anticipation. Why the fuss in the US over this lady detective? Such a fuss that it made it to the New York Times Bestseller list. There is also a Mma Ramotswe fan club based in New York. And now the fuss has seemed to make it to the other side of the Atlantic. Mma Ramotswe is on the UK’s bestseller lists and the five books that make up the series are flying off the shelves.
In trying to explain why the popularity of the "traditionally built" (as opposed to thin and unattractive) Mma Ramotswe has been slow to take off in Britain when compared with the fan base she has built up in the US, it is telling to look at what Mma Ramotswe stands for, who she is, and why she succeeds. It is not that the British have been slow to pick up on McCall Smith's writing talent (who has scores of other books to his credit), it is rather that this woman of Africa is not so much a private detective as a mender of spirits, of broken hearts, a sounding board for lost souls, and orphaned children. She is more Agony Aunt than she is Private Detective.
"Africa is introduced as friend rather than stranger, thanks to a narrator who is not anthropological spectator but rather participant"
The first book sets out Mma Ramotswe’s method of operation, her background and it introduces us, more significantly, to Botswana. We meet the city of Gaborone, are taken on a tour of the village of Mochudi, where Precious Ramotswe grew up with her father, we are shown the endless space where semi-desert meets endless blue, where rain is the national currency. What is most remarkable about this meeting, this virtual encounter with Botswana, is the compassion with which McCall Smith describes the country, the manner in which he has managed to recreate the everyday events of community life in a way that makes their difference, their cultural specifics, completely familiar. Africa is introduced as friend rather than stranger, thanks to a narrator who is not anthropological spectator, but rather participant. He acknowledges their difference as their strength, not ours.
As a novice private detective Mma Ramotswe, and her assistant Mma Makutsi, deal with a number of cases from suspiciously cheap luxury cars, to a doctor whose skill is obvious but consistency is lacking, to a schoolgirl escaping the clutches of her father, and a kidnapped boy. Each of these cases is solved, and resolved, through her common sense and intuition. She appeals not to the police, but to the inherent goodness that everyone possesses, or is forced to acknowledge once the misdeed is exposed. The police, and the resources they would most commonly use, are never resorted to. They never appear in the story. This is not about detection and law, but about emotion and righteousness. It is about emotional wellbeing and resolution and not about apprehending criminals.
A case in point is the third book in the series, The Kalahari Typing School for Men. Like most novels in the detective genre there is one main case which the heroine must solve. Only this is not a detective novel, so much as a "novel about a woman who happens to be a private detective", as McCall Smith said in an interview with Random House, the US publishers of the series. The case in question for Mma Ramotswe in the Kalahari Typing School is to find a few people from a rich man's past. There is no violence, no subterfuge, no stakeout, none of paraphernalia one would expect from the traditional detective novel. But, as we are constantly reminded, Mma Ramotswe is traditional in other ways. There is no real climax but instead a gentle weaving together of the threads of the story, such that what was threadbare is left comfortable again.
She is proud of her heritage as a Batswana and this is one of her main weapons in solving her cases. She drinks copious amounts of bush tea while using guile, flattery and patience to coax information out of unsuspecting grandmothers, lowly bureaucrats, street vendors and other ordinary people.
So if there is no mystery, no death, no robbery in a novel that is part of a detective series, why are they so popular? For two reasons I believe: the idea of Africa and the lessons on life.
First, there is the Africa that Mma Ramotswe represents. McCall Smith is often at pains to emphasise that this heroine, and these events, are from Botswana, a distinct and unique part of Africa, yet often Mma Ramotswe, and other protagonists in the books, refer to their Africanness, which is to be expected as that is their home. The picture that comes out of Mma Ramotswe’s adventures is of a country at peace with itself, successful, rich, a country that looks after its people, and a country whose people look after each other. In many ways it is an idealist view of Africa. But that is largely the reality of Botswana. McCall Smith has not exaggerated the assets that Botswana has, although he does tend to mask or downplay the second-class status of the Mosarwa, or bushmen as they are commonly known.
In condensing the beauty of Botswana into the efforts of one ‘traditional’ African woman, who is an ideal African citizen, McCall Smith allows readers who view Africa as an homogenous place to affirm their own ideals of what Africanness is. This concept of Africa through which Mma Ramotswe takes us is not threatening, it is not a place of myriad ethnicities and countries and religions and dilemmas and poverty and diseases. It is an Africa of human interaction and understanding, of compassion that is not enforced or artificial, it is the Africa of western idealism.
This is not to say that McCall Smith has misrepresented Africa or Botswana, but rather that a US audience, where the Mma Ramotswe series are so popular, feels it can get to grips with Africa because it affirms their own humanity. Although McCall Smith is only referring to one country, it is too easy to extrapolate from Botswana to homogenous Africa, to state that being an African is about this idea of being a person because of other people. Africa is not so straightforward, but Mma Ramotswe does not deal with Africa. She deals with Botswana and I believe that the blurring of Botswana with Africa, of Africa with black people, has turned Mma Ramotswe into an American success.
If evidence of this were needed, it is in the establishment of a website by Random House, where fans of Mma Ramotswe can ask her questions, come to her with their problems and consult her on issues such as etiquette. Like male computer gamers fantasising about Lara Croft, the cyberbabe of Tombraider fame, so American audiences have distorted the divide between the real Africa of more than 50 countries and hundreds of languages into a more convenient Africa, and Mma Ramotswe allows them to do this, and confirms their monochrome attitude to the continent. From Mma Ramotswe’s approach to life, readers have created an Africa as they would wish it to be. They see her as African first and Batswana second, while for Mma Ramotswe she is a Batswana above all else.
The second reason she is so popular in the US, more popular than elsewhere in the world, has to do with her approach to life. She confirms the beauty of life, of living and the inherent goodness that resides in everyone. She is not a detective who secretly relishes having to work in the underbelly of human nature. She trusts in the good of all people, she trusts in psychology and popular philosophy, she bases her rule book on the ten commandments, she trusts her woman’s intuition before she trusts the newspapers. In a way she offers a guide to life and living, an emotional self-help manual clothed in the colours of detective fiction. She is not threatening as a detective, she does not inspire awe and fear, but confers confidence and inspires hope in the future. McCall Smith has spawned a bestseller because he has written a popular psychology book, as much as he has written a mystery.
These books are not fast-paced but they are easy to read and gather momentum for the personal difficulties the characters must resolve. The books are peopled with believable characters, from Mma Ramotswe's fiance, Mr JLB Matekoni, to the two children they have adopted, and the two apprentices who work for Mr JLB Matekoni and who only ever talk about girls, much to the chagrin of Mma Ramotswe and her assistant Mma Makutsi. And they all play a role in solving the problems of the heart which abound in Mma Ramtoswe's detective agency.
The success of Mma Ramotswe is bound to continue as readers look forward to the sixth instalment, and a TV series based on the books.
For more information about McCall Smith, who has published about 50 books, and Mma Ramotswe, visit the website set up by Random House and dedicated to this African heroine. Click here. This will open a new window.
Richard Bartlett is the co-editor of the African Review of Books.
