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2000s: Always a pleasure to return to Botswana for a visit to Mma Ramotswe and there’s something ugly going on in the local beauty contest!
2000s: Always a pleasure to return to Botswana for a visit to Mma Ramotswe and there’s something ugly going on in the local beauty contest!
Well, we’re back to see what PI Precious Ramotswe of the Ladies Detective Agency is up to this time and it seems that this woman’s work is never done. She has a few money troubles and her latest cases are taking her in to new and strange territory for she is investigation the possible poisoning of a government official’s brother and the ugly goings on with some beauty competition contestants.
And just what is that Mr Matekoni of hers up to?
Going back to Botswana is always a welcome trip as it’s the literary equivalent of coming home and putting on your slippers and having a good chat and a catch up with friends. good friends who make you tea and stay a while.
The landscape here changes and widens for deal Precious is having money problems and the locations of the detective agency has changed to the premises of Speedy Motors to save money. Mma Makutsi is now Assistant Detective so many of the investigations are from her point of view which makes for a wider landscape in the novel as a whole.
“One day people would no longer do this; they would no longer go out to the lands for the planting, and they would buy their food in stores, as people did in town. But what a loss for the country that would be; what friendship, and solidarity, and feeling for the land would be sacrificed if that were to happen.”
As well as the local village, Precious now ventures out to visit the local “orphan farm”. Mr Makutisi’s depression and past are also new ground which are explored further here.
Ah but when you have such interesting friends showing you around their home,lifestyle, personal situations and the impressions of their culture and country, then it makes for a satisfying read. Read this and live and breathe Botswana –
“They swept the yards and woven grass; they had weeded the melon patches and told one another long stories about events that never happened, but could happen, perhaps, in another Botswana, somewhere else.”
Twitter: @McCallSmith
Web:alexandermccallsmith.co.uk
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