In the Company of Cheerful Ladies is the sixth in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is a series of twelve novels by Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith. The agency is located in Gaborone, capital of Botswana. Its founder is a Motswana woman, Mma Precious Ramotswe, who features as the stories' protagonist and main detective...

 series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE, is a Rhodesian-born Scottish writer and Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. In the late 20th century, McCall Smith became a respected expert on medical law and bioethics and served on British and international committees...

, set in Gaborone

Gaborone

' is the capital and largest city of Botswana with a population of 191,776 based on a 2006 survey, about 10% of the total population of Botswana....

, Botswana

Botswana

Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana , is a landlocked country located in Southern Africa. The citizens are referred to as "Batswana" . Formerly the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, Botswana adopted its new name after becoming independent within the Commonwealth on 30 September 1966...

, and featuring the Motswana protagonist Precious Ramotswe.

Plot introduction

Work and personal worries, and shadows from the past, threaten the happiness of Mma Ramotswe and her new husband Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. But her assistant, Mma Makutsi, and a new employee to whom Mma Ramotswe has been kind, are determined to repay their debt of gratitude by helping her in their turn. The problems are overcome, and Mma Makutsi herself finds love at last.

Plot summary

Mma Ramotswe and her new husband settle down to married life with their foster-children, but problems are piling up. At Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's own house, the tenant is running an illegal drinking den. Mma Ramotswe's violent ex-husband Note Mokote reappears. Then Charlie, the apprentice, gets entangled with a wealthy married woman. Help arrives in the person of Mr Polopetsi, whom Mma Ramotswe accidentally knocks off his bicycle with her van. He has been unemployed following a spell in prison after what appears to have been a miscarriage of justice

Miscarriage of justice

A miscarriage of justice primarily is the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. The term can also apply to errors in the other direction—"errors of impunity", and to civil cases. Most criminal justice systems have some means to overturn, or "quash", a wrongful...

, and Mma Ramotswe persuades her husband to employ him out of guilt and sympathy, but he proves an asset to the garage.

Mma Makutsi's love prospects improve when she starts dancing lessons and is partnered with another student, Mr Radiphuti. At first she tries to avoid him, as he is awkward and stammers, but he turns out to be a kind and gentle man and a romance begins. She removes some of Mma Ramotswe's burden of worry by solving an important fraud investigation on her own, and manoeuvring Charlie back to work. Mr Radiphuti's father enlists the help of Mma Ramotswe to put a proposal of marriage from his shy son to Mma Makutsi, and the two become engaged.

Literary significance and reception

This was the first of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels to be printed in hardback, with a very large initial print run of 101,000 copies to meet the anticipated demand. Its critical reception was mixed: The Scotsman stated that "McCall Smith’s beautiful evocation of life in Botswana offers sagacity, charm and a feeling of fable, combined with an utter and truthful sense of place, of belonging; however, The Sunday Times called the book "lacking in narrative drive" and concluded that "...some readers may wish to escape to somewhere a little more invigorating".

In 2004, the year of the novel's publication, Alexander McCall Smith won the Author of the Year award at the British Book Awards

British Book Awards

The Galaxy National Book Awards are a series of British literary awards focused on the best UK writers and their works, as selected by an academy of members from the British book publishing industry...

  and the Crime Writers Association Dagger in the Library award, both for the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.

Sources, references, external links, quotations