Starred review from September 1, 2023
McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is one of the most reliably entertaining cozy series running, soothingly returning readers to the tiny Botswana office of Mma Precious Ramotswe, the wise and resourceful founder of the agency that she operates with her comically snarky and over-reaching assistant, Mma Grace Makutsi, with whom she discusses detective strategy over mugs of South African red bush tea. In this twenty-fourth title in the series, Precious and Grace deal with two challenging cases. The first involves the Cool Singles Evening Club, in which married men allegedly pay a fee to prey upon unsuspecting single women. In the second, an American woman seeks their help to learn the fate of a relative in Botswana who was forced to fight for the British during World War II. McCall Smith portrays weighty injustices both historical, such as how the British enlisted African men to fight on their behalf, and contemporary, including how some relatives of orphans in Botswana adopt them into grueling lives as cattle herders or maids. But this is largely a comic novel, enlivened by Precious' reflections, Grace's jockeying for status, and part-time mechanic and apprentice detective Charlie's struggles to overcome his unreliability. A total delight.
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