The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (Book 1)

While I have never been to Africa personally, my parents spent time there, and I read this book to my Mother, who verified many of the facts to me. This book has several episodic detective cases, along with a large case and a live interest story which arc over the whole book. While it has some scary parts, overall the book is heartwarming. Clearly the main character, and the author, love Africa and it's people.

A good easy to read book with just enough changes in story line to keep the reader interested. Some of the changes are quick and seemingly disconnected, but the author pulls the pieces together rather neatly at the end. Easy to see why this became a series.

“Don’t disregard a hunch. Hunches are another form of knowledge.” —Alexander McCall Smith, No 1 Ladies Detective AgencyThe ‘No 1 Ladies Detective Agency’ series is truly a love story of Africa! Book one is a heartfelt, emotional, humorous story about the adventures of Mma [Madam] Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective. With the help of her associates and friends, Mma Ramotswe navigates her cases and personal life with a great deal of wisdom, creativity, and humor, not to mention an occasional cup of Bush tea. You’ll fall in love with this confident, stubborn, self assured, modern woman full of love for her country.I find it most interesting that the author of this delightful series, Alexander “Sandy" McCall Smith (McCall-Smith being his surname), is male, especially since he has managed to brilliantly write a very strong feminine voice perspective, a voice that I would have expected more from a female author. McCall Smith, a British-Zimbabwean writer and Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh, is internationally known as a writer of fiction. He is an excellent gifted writer and storyteller, and this book is both educational and humorous. His interesting characters definitely do not disappoint. There is a bit of a plot hole that went unanswered at the end of book one, involving the superstitions of black medicine, but perhaps this was on purpose, leading into future storylines in one of the series 19 books. It’s a great read, so enjoy!!“Every man has a map in his heart of his own country and … the heart will never allow you to forget this map.” —Alexander McCall Smith, No 1 Ladies Detective Agency“There is no difference between white men and black men; we are all the same; we are just people.” —Alexander McCall Smith, No 1 Ladies Detective Agency“If we could go back and know then what we know now, … my goodness, I would live my life differently!” —Alexander McCall Smith, No 1 Ladies Detective Agency“How sorry she felt for white people, … who were always dashing around and worrying themselves over things that were going to happen anyway. What use was it having all that money if you could never sit still?” —Alexander McCall Smith, No 1 Ladies Detective Agency

No text-to-speech. Luckily the library had the CD set. So I bought the Kindle version to read while the lovely voice of Lisette Lecat narrated the story to me. I think her voice added a taste of the culture to the reading of the story. Even still, I think I might have been just as happy with the robot voice on my Kindle. This is an expensive read for me. It is hard to try and get the whole package from the library on anything. When a part comes in that's what you have to drop other reads so as to get it done on time. I don't do well with just the audio version, I have to immerse myself in a book to finish. And because of all that I just said, this story leaves me not caring if I read any more of these books.The story was of a sing-song feel and I often found myself drifting to sleep or off to other thoughts. The author did capture the love of country and the evils that still exist. It reminded me of reading missionary books at my grandmother's house. I loved seeing a different world than the one I live in. But sad to say the attitudes of men seem universal. I was so disappointed in the ending. I thought we had finally grew a strong self-sufficient woman. Meh!Unless the Kindle and Audible versions of the rest of the series fall into my lap, I will not seek out the rest of the series.Since Amazon won't let me review these books separately, the above was about the first book. The following is the second book, Tears of a Giraffe.***I didn't think I would go on and read the next book. But I saw that my library had the Kindle version AND the audio CDs to go along with it. And as luck would have it I was able to check them out at the same time!I can't tell you how marvelous it is to listen to the narration of Lisette Lecat and her accent. Yes, I could have read the Kindle version without the text-to-speech and no audio version to help me. After all, I did read three chapters before the CDs showed up for me to check out. But that voice brought a reality to the characters of Botswana's No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency.What a beautifully told story! It does stray from my goal of reading books written by females with strong female characters. By the way, that goal is swiftly narrowing down to wanting to read mostly OLDER females. I'm tired of Young Adult books. But, though this is written by a male, I find the older female and her co-characters written so well that I dearly love this series.I hear that it has been made into HBO series. I can understand why. Yet I can't imagine it is as wonderful as these books. How can visual arts capture inner thoughts? But I will watch them and give them a chance.Since I can't afford to buy this series I will have to take it slowly as the library has the copies of Kindle and audio available.

Book arrived very promptly in excellent condition. It's a delightful read.

Ich liebe die Reihe!

I enjoyed being taken along the journey of Mma Ramotswe's case solving. Some were fun and others had taken Mma down the garden path, but all in all very enjoyable. The author's penchant for creating too many characters whose names all began with the letter M got me confused.

This is an evocative text weaving a picture of life in Botswana that is tender and light hearted.

Me ha gustado mucho, es un libro muy agradable de leer, fácil para practicar reading y con un nivel B1 creo que es suficiente. La trama es sencilla y entretenida. No hay sexo, no hay violencia.