The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is a novel by the Scottish writer Alexander McCall Smith, first published in 1998 as the opening book of a long-running series. It introduces Mma Precious Ramotswe, who uses money left to her by her late father to found Botswana's first detective agency run by a woman, setting up her office on the edge of Gaborone near the Kalahari Desert. Rather than following a single continuous case, the novel unfolds as a set of loosely connected episodes in which Ramotswe investigates a missing husband, a con man posing as a doctor, an insurance fraud, and a child possibly taken by witch doctors, while the narrative also traces her own earlier life, her difficult first marriage, and her growing friendship with the mechanic Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni. Written in a gentle, observational style very different from conventional hardboiled or forensic crime fiction, the novel and its sequels became an international publishing phenomenon, selling several million copies in English, winning the 2004 British Book Awards Author of the Year for McCall Smith, and later inspiring television and radio adaptations, while helping bring Botswana and its culture to a wide international readership.