You'll fall in love with Precious Ramotaswe, the heroine of Alexander McCall Smith's book, "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency." Precious, who refers to herself as a woman of "ample proportions," graduates from secretarial school with high grades and decides to open a detective agency in a building shared by an auto mechanic's shop in the African country of Botswana.
This book created such a sensation among readers that McCall Smith has followed it with nine other books in the series The interplay between Mma Ramotswe, her assistant, the owner of the mechanic's shop and his apprentices is fun to read and full of warm humanity. The way of life in Botswana, is described in detail and provides a wonderful backdrop to the unusual cases Mma solves in her unique manner.
McCall Smith's style is witty, simple, and has a beautiful spirit. It has been described as "delightful, positively uplifting, enthralling...." It's all of the above and more. Read the first book and you'll come back for more. So far there are ten books in this series.
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Besides the "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" novels, the author has written several other series. The dry humor in his " Portuguese Irregular Verbs" series is delightful. They are about a clueless, neurotic, bumbling professor of Portuguese Irregular Verbs whose jealousy of one of his fellow professors is hilarious. As in the "Ladies Detective" series, I'd suggest that you read the first of the series initially for a bit more background about the characters.
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