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A charming mystery set in Africa
It's a worthy addition to the gentle series about the Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency. No mean streets here.
The Miracle
at Speedy Motors
By Alexander McCall Smith Pantheon. 256 pp. $21.95
Reviewed by Bill Kent
The full-length movie is awaiting American release. Directed by the late Anthony Minghella, and starring Jill Scott as Precious Ramotswe, the divorced woman of "traditional build" who uses her inheritance to found the Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency, it is the first feature to be filmed entirely in Botswana, the African nation where Alexander McCall Smith, now residing in Scotland, was once a professor of law. But before the movie is seen here, why not drop in on this charming, warmly affecting pastoral mystery series? With The Miracle at Speedy Motors, Smith's gently rendered, worldly-wise glimpses of modern African village life now number nine volumes. Die-hard fans and newbies take note: The newest entry does everything a series book should. It duplicates the joys of the books that preceded it while taking the main characters just a little bit further. It spoils nothing to reveal that Ramotswe is now married to J.L.B. Matekoni, the kind but troubled proprietor of Twokleng Road Speedy Motors, whom she met in the first book. They have two foster children, one of whom, the daughter Motholeli, suffers from spinal paralysis and uses a wheelchair. Though Ramotswe's fussy, bespectacled secretary and "right hand lady," Grace Makutsi, has done enough sleuthing to earn a promotion to "associate detective," Ramotswe is somewhat concerned about her assistant's ambitions. In the wastepaper basket, Ramotswe has found discarded pieces of paper on which Makutsi has practiced signing her name not just as Grace Radiphuti - she's now engaged to Double Comfort Furniture Shop owner Phuti Radiphuti - but with the title "chief detective." Ramotswe's doubts about her assistant fade when the morning mail brings an unsigned letter that calls Ramotswe fat and warns her and her "big glasses" secretary to "watch out!" As Ramotswe tries to determine the identity of the writer of this and subsequent insulting letters, a woman arrives who is concerned about her ancestry. Manka Sebina knows she was adopted, but her foster parents died without telling her who her real parents were. Could the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency find out? In what is by now familiar ground for series fans, Ramotswe's path to solving these twin mysteries is anything but a straight line, as she fires up her aging white van and drives off to encounter a number of carefully drawn eccentrics and village characters who scatter rumors and contradictions across Ramotswe's path. Among them is a querulous woman Ramotswe finds sitting under a chair mounted in a tree - that's right, she's sitting under the chair. The woman remembers Sebina as being so dissatisfied with her real parents that Sebina decided she must be adopted. And yet, Mwa Potokwani, "matron of the orphan farm," recalls that Sebina was, in fact, adopted, and she has a brother who "doesn't like women." While Ramotswe is investigating, Makutsi persuades her naive fiance to buy her the biggest and most expensive bed she has ever seen. When the bed arrives at Makutsi's small house, it is too big to fit through the door. The delivery men refuse to take the bed back, and leave it propped up against the side of the house, where it is ruined in a sudden rainfall. What will Makutsi tell her fiance? How will Ramotswe cover her tracks after she discovers that Sebina might not be related to the man Ramotswe previously identified as her brother? In a third subplot, how will Ramotswe prevent her husband from mortgaging his garage to pay for their daughter's dubious miracle cure, while unmasking the nasty letter writer? Ramotswe will solve these problems, not through the tough talk and violent deeds of a typical private-eye tale, but through a gentle blend of accident, intent, sudden twists of fate and elliptical conversations fueled by many cups of bush tea. Those who like their mysteries filled with mean streets, high crimes and noirish cynicism should pass this series by, because the Ladies' No. 1 books are what mystery mavens call "cozies." Best represented by the English village explorations of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, a cozy is not so much concerned with finding a culprit, or seeing justice done, as it is in examining the relationships among numerous characters and the manners that determine behavior. The Miracle at Speedy Motors is as comfy cozy as can be. Without giving anything away, you can be sure that the miracles Ramotswe experiences won't be grand, biblical acts of divine retribution, but smaller, closer, sentimental moments in which honesty really is the best policy, mistakes bring hidden blessings, and hatred can give way to the essential goodness in human nature. Which might be just the thing for these troubled times.
Bill Kent is the author of seven mystery novels. He teaches novel writing at Temple University and lives in Wynnewood.
at Speedy Motors
By Alexander McCall Smith Pantheon. 256 pp. $21.95
Reviewed by Bill Kent
The full-length movie is awaiting American release. Directed by the late Anthony Minghella, and starring Jill Scott as Precious Ramotswe, the divorced woman of "traditional build" who uses her inheritance to found the Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency, it is the first feature to be filmed entirely in Botswana, the African nation where Alexander McCall Smith, now residing in Scotland, was once a professor of law. But before the movie is seen here, why not drop in on this charming, warmly affecting pastoral mystery series? With The Miracle at Speedy Motors, Smith's gently rendered, worldly-wise glimpses of modern African village life now number nine volumes. Die-hard fans and newbies take note: The newest entry does everything a series book should. It duplicates the joys of the books that preceded it while taking the main characters just a little bit further. It spoils nothing to reveal that Ramotswe is now married to J.L.B. Matekoni, the kind but troubled proprietor of Twokleng Road Speedy Motors, whom she met in the first book. They have two foster children, one of whom, the daughter Motholeli, suffers from spinal paralysis and uses a wheelchair. Though Ramotswe's fussy, bespectacled secretary and "right hand lady," Grace Makutsi, has done enough sleuthing to earn a promotion to "associate detective," Ramotswe is somewhat concerned about her assistant's ambitions. In the wastepaper basket, Ramotswe has found discarded pieces of paper on which Makutsi has practiced signing her name not just as Grace Radiphuti - she's now engaged to Double Comfort Furniture Shop owner Phuti Radiphuti - but with the title "chief detective." Ramotswe's doubts about her assistant fade when the morning mail brings an unsigned letter that calls Ramotswe fat and warns her and her "big glasses" secretary to "watch out!" As Ramotswe tries to determine the identity of the writer of this and subsequent insulting letters, a woman arrives who is concerned about her ancestry. Manka Sebina knows she was adopted, but her foster parents died without telling her who her real parents were. Could the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency find out? In what is by now familiar ground for series fans, Ramotswe's path to solving these twin mysteries is anything but a straight line, as she fires up her aging white van and drives off to encounter a number of carefully drawn eccentrics and village characters who scatter rumors and contradictions across Ramotswe's path. Among them is a querulous woman Ramotswe finds sitting under a chair mounted in a tree - that's right, she's sitting under the chair. The woman remembers Sebina as being so dissatisfied with her real parents that Sebina decided she must be adopted. And yet, Mwa Potokwani, "matron of the orphan farm," recalls that Sebina was, in fact, adopted, and she has a brother who "doesn't like women." While Ramotswe is investigating, Makutsi persuades her naive fiance to buy her the biggest and most expensive bed she has ever seen. When the bed arrives at Makutsi's small house, it is too big to fit through the door. The delivery men refuse to take the bed back, and leave it propped up against the side of the house, where it is ruined in a sudden rainfall. What will Makutsi tell her fiance? How will Ramotswe cover her tracks after she discovers that Sebina might not be related to the man Ramotswe previously identified as her brother? In a third subplot, how will Ramotswe prevent her husband from mortgaging his garage to pay for their daughter's dubious miracle cure, while unmasking the nasty letter writer? Ramotswe will solve these problems, not through the tough talk and violent deeds of a typical private-eye tale, but through a gentle blend of accident, intent, sudden twists of fate and elliptical conversations fueled by many cups of bush tea. Those who like their mysteries filled with mean streets, high crimes and noirish cynicism should pass this series by, because the Ladies' No. 1 books are what mystery mavens call "cozies." Best represented by the English village explorations of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, a cozy is not so much concerned with finding a culprit, or seeing justice done, as it is in examining the relationships among numerous characters and the manners that determine behavior. The Miracle at Speedy Motors is as comfy cozy as can be. Without giving anything away, you can be sure that the miracles Ramotswe experiences won't be grand, biblical acts of divine retribution, but smaller, closer, sentimental moments in which honesty really is the best policy, mistakes bring hidden blessings, and hatred can give way to the essential goodness in human nature. Which might be just the thing for these troubled times.
Bill Kent is the author of seven mystery novels. He teaches novel writing at Temple University and lives in Wynnewood.
