The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series
&
The Department of Sensitive Crimes series
by Alexander McCall Smith
Take any of McCall Smith’s books to bed. I promise you will have better dreams.
I read to fall asleep and mysteries are my favorite – but a grisly murder mystery is not always what you want to read just before bed. Enter McCall Smith, who I suspect is the most optimistic person on the planet.
The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series is just so lovely. They tell the stories of Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in Botswana, and the very, very many cups of tea she drinks. The books are not gritty or heart-stopping. They are heart-reinforcing.
Read them in print – delightful. Listen to them on audio – narrator Lisette Lecat is perfect. She makes the humor sparkle. If you want an even more wholesome treat, listen to The Mystery of the Missing Lion and The Mystery of Meerkat Hill, two Precious Ramotswe Mysteries for Young Readers. (Also, there was one season of a TV show starring Jill Scott as Mma Ramotswe and filmed on location in Botswana. Worth checking out. It captures the feel of the books very well.)
These books are like getting together with an old, dear friend. They create a place you want to visit. Characters I desperately wish I could talk to in real life. The prose is quiet and thoughtful and the observations about people feel true. There is heartbreak in these books. There is also, far more often, people treating each other kindly, in ways that feel both gentle and enormously powerful.
The Department of Sensitive Crimes is the first book in a new series set in Sweden. It has the same generous, optimistic spirit with some slightly darker humor. Sweden is slightly less of a vibrant character than Botswana is in the Ramotswe books.
I enjoyed it a little bit less, but I think I was just missing Precious and Grace.
A mystery book with no bodies may sound like it will be boring. And it will be for some. But I like the substance you find in a book that explores relationships and heartbreak and carefully, gently and with the best intentions, sets things to rights.
Ulf stood quite still. Then he bent down, patted Martin reassuringly on the head and took him back along the path by which they had come – which is, of course, the path that you can always trust to take you back to where you belong.
The Department of Sensitive Crimes by Alexander McCall Smith