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| Sunday, May 30, 2004 |
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| Sunday, May 30, 2004 |
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The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency For
several decades, Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple has been occupying pride of place as the lone woman in the private detectives’ hall of fame. Now arrives the No. 2 lady detective, who runs the No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency in, of all places, Botswana. While good old Miss Marple is an amateur who loves to crack murder mysteries, Mma Ramotswe is a pro who has to deal with all sorts of cases to earn a living. Adultery, fraud, theft, even witchcraft—she thinks she has seen all varieties of human dishonesty, only to be surprised now and then. At the age of 35, she is already “parentless, veteran of a nightmare marriage, and mother, for a brief and lovely five days”, yet still possesses the courage to carry on and excel in a male preserve. She knows not only how to expose crooked men, but also to tactfully humble male chauvinists and politely turn down her suitors. Mma Ramotswe is not your perfect detective who doesn’t put a foot wrong. A teenaged girl fools her into believing that she doesn’t have a boyfriend; once she even loses the trail of a suspect. Moreover, her sleuthing is at times interrupted by spells of contemplation, when she thinks about things as disparate as Africa, constipation and men’s sex mania. All hiccups notwithstanding, she comes up trumps by virtue of her perseverance and understanding of human nature. If you are looking for intricately and cleverly crafted stories, with plenty of red herrings and twists, then this book is not for you. The situations are quite credible, and the investigations don’t lead to a dramatic climax. However, this downbeat realism throws into sharp relief the inspiring personality of Mma Ramotswe. Here is one sleuth who doesn’t merely solve cases and collect her fee—she goes about fixing people’s lives with philanthropic zeal. It is hard not to like and admire this roly-poly woman of character. Above all, the novel offers a rich slice of life in Africa, a wonderful land unfortunately plagued by natural as well as man-made calamities. But despite the past tribulations and present hardships, Mma is proud to be an African. She doesn’t want her people to become like everybody else: “soulless, selfish, forgetful of what it means to be an African, or, worse still, ashamed of Africa.” Rather, she embodies all that is noble and big-hearted about the continent. It is a tribute to African womanhood as well as a delightful work of detective fiction. In a word,
unputdownable. |
