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The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency
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Plot Summary of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency
"Precious Ramotswe experiences a disastrous marriage to a musician; the couple have a child which dies shortly after being born, and she returns to the village where she was born. Her father dies of a disease caused by his work in the South African diamond mines, and he leaves his daughter a valuable herd of cattle. Precious uses the proceeds from the sale of the herd to set up a detective agency. Although things are hard at first, she proceeds to serve a number of cases, including the disappearance of a small boy. Although the book deals with the work of detection, it has none of the hallmarks of a conventional thriller, being rather a character study of a person who simply happens to be a detective."
Stephen Coombs, Resident Scholar

"Miss Ramotswe takes her inheritance from her father and opens up The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency in Botswana. With the help from her friends, a mechanic, a secretarty, and other eccentric townspeople, Mma Ramotswe investigates the disappearance of a husband, the mystery of a doctor who only knows what he's doing half the time, and the kidnapping of a young boy. She has ingenious mystery solving skills, including tricking a man into revealing he is not the father of the young woman he's moved in with, to the uncovering of forged medical documents in the case of a man suing his employer for disability. But the secondary focus of the novel, the history of Botswana and it's people, can not be understated."
Rebecca Reissman, Resident Scholar



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Alexander McCall Smith Resident Scholar Profiles

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