A softer sleuth

Given that Alexander McCall Smith’s popular heroine Precious Ramotswe is the owner and operator of Botswana’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, it’s understandable that her newest adventure, and the five that preceded it, are considered mysteries. But as the author has pointed out, the novels are “not tough gumshoe stuff.” Nor will you find among Mma Ramotswe’s investigations any of today’s crime novel cliches -- no Mensa-bright serial killers, sociopathic Russian emigres, ghoulish autopsies or courtroom histrionics.

In their stead, you’ll be treated to the continuing story of a level-headed, upwardly mobile, “traditionally built” African woman in her 30s who, with her younger, thinner and somewhat less patient assistant, Grace Makutsi, uses common sense, an innate knowledge of human nature and her vocational bible, Clovis Andersen’s “Principles of Private Detection,” to close cases involving errant spouses, absconding employees, wandering daughters and (most dramatically) a jealousy-inspired wannabe murderess and a witch doctor.

As “Cheerful Ladies” opens, Precious’ detective agency is flourishing. She’s the mother of two adopted children and the happy new wife of “that most gracious of mechanics,” Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, the dedicated owner of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. Her good fortune has spread to the industrious Mma Makutsi, who, by establishing in her free time the Kalahari Typing School for Men (which refers to another series entry), has improved both her lifestyle and her self-confidence. But, amid all this progress, there are portents of trouble. As Precious sips bush tea on the veranda of her favorite cafe, her pleasant morning is interrupted by a driver scraping a parked car and speeding off. Then, seeing a woman steal a bauble from a street merchant, she leaves her table to apprehend the thief, only to be stopped by a waitress accusing her of running out on the bill. Worse yet, her accuser demands a large tip for not calling the police.

“It was difficult for Mma Ramotswe to imagine how anybody could steal from another, or do any of the things which one reads about in the Botswana Daily News court reports,” McCall Smith writes. “The only explanation was that people who did that sort of thing had no understanding of what others felt.”

The author spins his tales in such a beguiling, lyrical style (reminiscent of Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So” stories) that it comes as something of a surprise when, in the course of the new novel’s frequently humorous subplots (a housebreaker forced to escape without his trousers; a young apprentice mechanic running away with an older married woman; a stuttering suitor’s pursuit of Mma Makutsi) he abruptly reminds us of Precious’ difficult past. She has survived a “nightmare marriage” to a brutal and demoralizing jazzman, suffered the loss of a baby and her beloved father and struggled through the agency’s early days, working without pay while proving her worth to a male chauvinist society and to herself.

Like the other books in the series, “Cheerful Ladies” is blessed with Zimbabwe-born McCall Smith’s richly detailed portraits of life in Africa and his flair for storytelling with an engaging cast of fully realized characters. But as Mma Ramotswe confronts a particularly loathsome opponent and admits to a lapse in judgment that could destroy everything she’s worked to achieve, the novel takes on a seriousness of purpose and an edge that set it apart from and slightly above its predecessors.

It may not exactly be “tough gumshoe stuff,” but the no-nonsense way Botswana’s top lady detective rises to her thorniest challenge suggests that she could teach Spenser and Kinsey Millhone a few things about keeping the bad guys at bay. *