2008-03-18 Amusing and thought-provoking - despite a degree of predictablity

Slow paced, often predictable, repetitive, based in an imaginary, utopian version of a very small country. Not really crime fiction and certainly not thrillers. So why do I like the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency so much?

I read "The Good Husband of Zebra Drive", having realised, on buying the recently published next book in the series, and issued, that I had missed it out. My main quibble is that the denouement of this episode was itself very predictable, based I am sure on an "urban myth" or something similar - and while elements of the storyline are very predictable, I had not previously found the crux of the ending to be.

Professor McCall Smith writes unashamedly feel-good books, with a slow, measured pace and lightness of touch that makes you feel that Mma Ramotswe is leading you by the hand. The baddies, such as they are, are never really bad, and the conflicts around which the stories are based are ones between basically good people with everyday, minor flaws. I think that the intentional elements of predictability are supposed to reflect the sparsely inhabited place they are set, and the people who live there, who have lived their all their lives and are content to die there too as their ancestors did before them. Those of us who live in the West rather than in this fictional Botswana are perhaps being invited by McCall Smith to consider that our frenetic lifestyles are self-inflicted and by no means a guarantor of greater happiness.

McCall Smith was a professor of medical law and clearly has great interest in philosophy and ethics. The books are readers in practical philosophy, a commentary on the differences between man and woman and young and old, a call to live a calmer life and to treat one's fellow human being a little better. And also, despite the predictable bits, they are amusing, thought-provoking and a cracking good read.