All reviews copyright 1984-2022 Evelyn C. Leeper.
44 SCOTLAND STREET by Alexander McCall Smith:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/27/2009]
44 SCOTLAND STREET by Andrew McCall Smith (ISBN-13 978-1-400-07944-5, ISBN-10 1-400-07944-5) is the first book in another series by the author of the "Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency" books. This one is set in the art world of Edinburgh, and I did not find it anywhere nearly as enjoyable, but that is probably because I thought none of the characters were really interesting in the same way that the characters in the "Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency" books were. The only interesting characters were Bertie and his pushy mother. What was intriguing was McCall Smith's discussion of what it was like to write a serial novel, which this was.
First, McCall Smith did not write the entire novel ahead of time, so although he started with several chapters written, he fell behind in his writing, and found himself up against a perpetual deadline. And he also discovered something perhaps less commonly thought of: he could not go back and make any changes in earlier chapters. So if he decides while writing chapter 15 that it would have worked better if the painting at the beginning was a still life rather than a seascape, that too bad--he's stuck with the seascape.
THE DEPARTMENT OF SENSITIVE CRIMES by Alexander McCall Smith:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/01/2019]
THE DEPARTMENT OF SENSITIVE CRIMES by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon, ISBN 978-1-984-84738-6) is probably intended to be the first of a new detective series by him. Set in Sweden, the book seemed to have a lot of puns that work in English, but would not work in Swedish. I have never really warmed to any of McCall Smith's books other than the "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series.
HEAVENLY DATE AND OTHER FLIRTATIONS by Alexander McCall Smith:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/02/2011]
HEAVENLY DATE AND OTHER FLIRTATIONS by Alexander McCall Smith (ISBN 978-0-965-90442-1) is a collection of short stories about dating from the author of the "Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency" and "44 Scotland Street" series. These are quite unlike those, being more serious attempts at straightforward (one might almost say literary) fiction. They're okay, but Alexander McCall Smith will, I believe, suffer the same fate as another "three-name" writer, Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle tried to distance himself from his Sherlock Holmes stories and thought he would be remembered for his historical novels. He was wrong. I don't know if that is what McCall Smith is trying to do, but clearly his legacy will be his series.
THE HOUSE OF UNEXPECTED SISTERS by Alexander McCall Smith:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/09/2018]
THE HOUSE OF UNEXPECTED SISTERS by Alexander McCall Smith (ISBN 978-1-101-87137-9) is the 18th book in the "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" ("N1LDA") series. While it is okay, the series is definitely getting weaker and more repetitive.
For example, McCall Smith writes, "Anybody in any employment in Botswana was expected to engage somebody to help in the house. There was nothing extravagant about this; it was, in fact, a form of sharing: if you had a job, you had money, and money needed to be spread around. The people who helped in the house were often paid a pittance and expected to work long hours, but they were desperate for any job and were pleased to take on what came their way." But McCall Smith is quick to add that Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi do not take advantage of people this way, and always pay them a decent wage and treat them well.
This is a reasonable philosophy, but McCall Smith wrote about it back in book two or three of the "N1LDA" series. In short, he is starting to repeat himself even more than with his long descriptions of the landscape, Mma Ramotswe's reminiscences of her father, Mma Makutsi's 97%, and Violet Sephotho. Really, I am so sick of Violet Sephotho always being the villain. In the first few books in the "N1LDA" series, Mma Ramotswe solved important mysteries, even crimes. Now, she is reduced to figuring out why someone fired a sales clerk, and resolving some personal issues of her own.
It's true that Agatha Christie was very repetitive in her works, and even Conan Doyle used a lot of the same ideas in "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty", "The Adventure of the Second Stain", and "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet". But somehow I am finding it less appealing in the "N1LDA" series.
TO THE LAND OF LONG LOST FRIENDS by Alexander McCall Smith:
HOW TO RAISE AN ELEPHANT by Alexander McCall Smith:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/02/22]
I caught up on the "No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" series by Alexander McCall Smith with TO THE LAND OF LONG LOST FRIENDS (Anchor, ISBN 978-0-525-56427-0) and HOW TO RAISE AN ELEPHANT (Anchor, ISBN 978-0-593-31095-3). McCall Smith is trying to be more in tune with present trends, but seems mildly uncomfortable with this. For example, in a discussion of men having many girlfriends, there is mention of men who don't like "ladies". (McCall Smith often has his characters speak of "ladies" rather than "women"--not surprising, given the name of the agency, I suppose.) Mma Makutsi thinks this is unfair of them because this means some women won't find men. The idea that some "ladies" don't like men apparently doesn't occur to her, and none of these men ever seem to be a character in one of the books. (In Botswana, homosexuality and homosexual acts are legal, as is gender-affirming treatment, and discrimination on the basis of either is prohibited.
(However, gay marriage and adoptions by gay partners are not recognized.)
There is perhaps less detection in these books than earlier ones, and more personal problems. There are also long passages about rain, and cattle, and whether men should cook, and how various interpersonal relationships should be handled. On the whole these repeat similar passages from earlier in the series, but this one spoken by a math teacher was new, and really resonated with Mark's experience:
"I like it when I get through to some of the kids. Maybe a child who has not been doing well ..., and then you show them that they can actually do mathematics rather well, and then you see their face light up and you know that you've gotten through to them That is a very special moment. ... I had a boy, fourteen, maybe fifteen; he was not doing very well in my mathematics class, an so I gave him some extra time in the afternoon. [description of how his problem was a father who kept telling him he was stupid, and how the teacher countered that] He started to do very well, ..Mma. He has gone off now to do a degree in mathematics. He wants to be an actuary."
(And speaking of current attitudes, "wokeness", and all that stuff, did you even notice that McCall Smith used the plural pronouns "they", "them", and "their" for a single individual?)
THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY by Alexander McCall Smith:
THE KALAHARI TYPING SCHOOL FOR MEN by Alexander McCall Smith:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/19/2012]
In the first sentence of THE KALAHARI TYPING SCHOOL FOR MEN by Alexander McCall Smith (ISBN 978-0-375-42217-1), Mma Ramotswe is "looking up at the high sky of Botswana, so empty that the blue is almost white." This reminded me of another curiosity about colors. Apparently a linguist had heard that blue was the last primary color to be distinguished in any language, so he decided to try an experiment when his daughter was born. He and his wife agreed to teach her all the colors except blue. After she had learned red, yellow, white, and so on, he waited for a clear day, then asked her what color the sky was. She looked at it for a few seconds and then said that it was white. (After this, she then learned blue very quickly, by the way.)
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/29/2005]
Our book discussion chose Alexander McCall Smith's THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY (ISBN 1-4000-3477-9) for this month. It was a nice, amiable book, interesting more for the setting (Botswana) and characters than for any amazing detective work. It was popular enough that people expressed an interest in reading the next book for a future discussion. McCall Smith has also written a series of novellas about "Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld", a professor of Romance Philology. (These are published as individual books: PORTUGUESE IRREGULAR VERBS, THE FINER POINTS OF SAUSAGE DOGS, and AT THE VILLA OF REDUCED CIRCUMSTANCES.) They are more in the tradition of screwball comedies, with such plots as von Iglefeld being confused with a professor of veterinary medicine, Professor von Igelfold, and invited to give a talk on daschunds in Arkansas, or being asked to transport stolen relics with predictably disastrous results. I read the first two--they're fast reads, but I'd recommend sticking with his "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series.
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/07/2021]
I have been listening to the audiobooks of the "No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" series and have decided that it jumped the shark around book five (THE FULL CUPBOARD OF LIFE). That seems to be when McCall Smith started writing more about how wonderful Botswana is, how important cattle are, how living in villages is better than living in towns, how the old Motswana ways were so much better than the modern ways, and on and on about Mma Ramotswe's (or rather, McCall Smith's) general philosophy of life. (Of course, it is the "modern" ways that let Ma Ramotswe have a detective agency and let her raise those two orphans rather than let the boy be buried alive and his sister abandoned.) Each book seems to have less and less detection; reviews imply there is really none at all in the latest volumes. In addition, with book six, McCall Smith brings in Violet Sepotho as a sort of distaff Moriarty or Fu Manchu, and her persistence through more than half a dozen books was part of what drove me away from the newer books of the series. Now I also hear that the character of Mma Makutsi has also changed, and not for the better.
These are problems with many series--the author hears what was popular in book N, and decides to put more of it in book N+1. In this case, people liked the Motswana asides, so McCall Smith added more in each book. (I guess people also liked Mma Makutsi's "97%" shtick, because it also seems to increase over the series.) But while there are brief references in many Sherlock Holmes stories to his dislike of inactivity, or in the Poirot novels to "the little gray cells," they don't replace the plot.
Other irritations include the constant reference to "the younger apprentice" without ever naming him. When people who work with him say things like, "Call that younger apprentice in here," rather than "Call Fan in here" (he is eventually named), it just sounds weird. And the idea that some thug who is threatening Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni will be intimidated by the matron of an orphan farm berating him is very unlikely. Would some gangster here be stopped by a teacher chastising him? (And can anyone explain why he is "Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni" and not "Rra Matekoni"?)
So my bottom line is that I recommend the first four or five novels, but am less enthusiastic about the series as it progresses. Then again, it has been wildly popular considerably past my recommended stopping point.
(Even without repetitive aspects, most series continue too long. The consensus seems to be, for example, that one should read Isaac Asimov's original "Foundation" trilogy and then stop.)
THE SATURDAY BIG TENT WEDDING PARTY by Alexander McCall Smith:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/19/2011]
THE SATURDAY BIG TENT WEDDING PARTY by Alexander McCall Smith (ISBN 978-0-307-37839-2) is the twelfth book in the "No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" series. McCall Smith has moved away from mysteries and detection, and into more philosophizing (and preaching). All the crises work out conveniently (although the election results seem left for the next book). As many others have noted, the children that Mma Ramotswe and Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni had adopted seem to have disappeared, to the extent that they never have any effect on Mma Ramotswe's schedule. I wish McCall Smith would return to the detection aspect that began this series.
TEA TIME FOR THE TRADITIONALLY BUILT by Alexander McCall Smith:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 08/28/2009]
As with most series, the "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series is starting to run down. The tenth (and latest) is TEA TIME FOR THE TRADITIONALLY BUILT by Alexander McCall Smith (ISBN-13 978-0-375-42449-6, ISBN-10 0-375-42449-X) and shows signs of being produced more because it is expected than out of the inspiration of a story. There are more--and more flagrant--red herrings than in the earlier books, as if it needed padding out. And the editing has gotten sloppy (assuming it has not been dropped altogether). For example, on page 20, Mma Ramotswe's appointment with Mr. Molofololo is at eleven o'clock; on page 29 it is at ten o'clock. (And why are some men "Mr." and some men "Ra"?) And who is writing the blurbs? "Irrepressible" is not an adjective I would apply to Mma Ramotswe--it is far too frivolous for her. On the plus side, McCall Smith does finally give the younger apprentice a name. But the thinness of the plot makes me think it may be time for McCall Smith to put this series on hiatus, at least until he has a stronger basis for a book.
(By the way, on page 48 it is "Mafeking" and on page 52 it is "Mafikeng", but this is not a typo--the first (on a tea tin) was the old British spelling, the second is the current South African spelling.
THE WOMAN WHO WALKED IN SUNSHINE by Alexander McCall Smith:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/19/2016]
THE WOMAN WHO WALKED IN SUNSHINE by Alexander McCall Smith (ISBN 978-0-307-91156-8) is number sixteen in the "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series and it is pretty much more of the same. We do get to see that Mma Makutsi has matured, but that is about the only change. And I am getting tired of Violet Sephotho being dragged in as the evil villain in every book. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle mentioned Moriarty in only seven stories, and he was an active character in only two ("The Final Problem" and THE VALLEY OF FEAR).