Book Review by Anna Peña Vicent

Book Title: The Nº 1 Ladies’Detective Agency.

Author: Alexander McCall Smith.

Publisher/ Year: Abacus 1998

Book type: Detective, mystery novel

Pages: 250

Summary:

When Precious Ramotswe, a fat and friendly African lady, decides to use the money of her father’s inheritage to set up a Detective Agency in Botswana (Africa), people is sceptical. But Mma Ramotswe feels ensure of her success and she is decided to help people with problems in their lives. Although she has never studied to become a private detective, she is endowed with a cunning intuition, which will help her to solve most of the cases. Then she is hired to find a missing husband, uncover a con man, follow a teenager…But the most important and dangerous will be the difficult task of finding a missing boy who may have been kidnapped by witch doctors. Throw all these stories we will find an accurately description of Africa, its landscape and lifestyle.

Opinion:

I’ve found the book quite simple and easy to read. On the other hand I’ve found it a bit disappointing because I expected more mystery involving the cases.

In my opinion the most interesting thing is the fantastic approach to the African life style and its landscape that allows to discover a different view of Africa.

A pleasant enough to read, but I won’t be bothering with the rest of the titles in the series.

Lenguage/ Style:

In general, the vocabulary is quite simple, and just in some cases you have to look into the dictionary for unfamiliar words.

The novel is written in 3^rd person using the past but introducing dialogues in present time and he always uses the correct tone.