Two Satisfying Books

THERE COMES A TIME when scientific journals, even the editorials in the Wall Street Journal, lose interest. "Must I read this?" Even bragging rights lose their importance.

So, I looked around for a simple mystery, one that was quiet and restful, perhaps a little humorous. No shootings, no blood, no swearing. Seemed impossible.

And then I found two — The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and The Tears of The Giraffe. Both were written by Alexander McCall Smith, a professor of medical law at Edinburgh University, who was born in Zimbabwe and taught law at the University of Botswana.

The setting is the dry and dusty land of Botswana where Precious Ramotswe inherits the proceeds from the sale of her father's cattle and sets up a detective agency. She has lived through a short, unhappy marriage and loss of a child, and is confident she can help solve other people's problems. Although business is slow in coming, she hires a secretary, Mma Makutsi, a graduate of the Botswana Secretarial College with a mark of 97 percent, who types furiously whenever a possible client approaches. A detective has to have a secretary.

These "lyrical" novels of Africa are praised by the LA Times and The Tears of The Giraffe was selected as one of The Guardian's top 10 fiction paperbacks of the year.

Solving problems is not easy, but Mma Ramotswe manages with ingenuity and common sense. I learned how poor people lived and still kept their happiness and concern for their neighbors. Mma Ramotswe wasn't sure about God but she thanked him for her good fortune and that she did not live in Nigeria or South Africa. She is engaged to Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, a very special mechanic and owner of a garage who has been persuaded by the director of an orphanage to adopt two orphans who ran away from a wandering tribe.

Recounting the cases would spoil the reading, but the following excerpts give the flavor:

"Mma Ramotswe was given to philosophical speculation, but only up to a point. Such questions were undoubtedly challenging, but they tended to lead to further questions which simply could not be answered. And at that point one ended up, as often as not, having to accept that things are as they are simply because that is the way they are. So everybody knew, for instance, that it was wrong for a man to be too close to a place where a woman is giving birth. That was something which was so obvious that it hardly needed to be stated. But then there were these remarkable ideas in other countries that suggested that men should actually attend the birth of their children.

"When Mma Ramotswe read about that in a magazine, her breath was taken away. But then she had asked herself why a father should not see his child being born, so that he could welcome it into the world and share the joy of the occasion, and she had found it difficult to find a reason. That is not to say it was not wrong — there was no question that it was profoundly wrong for a man to be there—but how could one justify the prohibition? Ultimately the answer must be that it was wrong because the old Botswana morality said that it was. wrong, and the old Botswana morality, as everybody knew, was so plainly right. It just felt right."

And another: A problem was successfully ended and now there was a meeting of a white grandmother, a boy and the detective.

"Mma Ramotswe had a gift for the American woman, a basket which on her return journey from Bulawayo she had bought, on impulse, from a woman sitting by the side of the road in Francistown. The woman was desperate, and Mma Ramotswe, who did not need a basket, had bought it to help her. It was a traditional Botswana basket, with a design worked into the weaving.

"'These little marks here are tears,' she said. 'The giraffe gives its tears to the women and they weave them into the basket.'

"The American woman took the basket politely, in the proper Botswana way of receiving a gift — with both hands. How rude were people who took a gift with one hand, as if snatching it from the donor; she knew better. 'You are very kind, Mma,' she said. 'But why did the giraffe give its tears?'

"Mma Ramotswe shrugged; she had never thought about it. 'I suppose that it means that we can all give something,' she said. 'A giraffe has nothing else to give — only tears.' Did it mean that? She wondered. And for a moment she imagined that she saw a giraffe peering down through the trees, its strange, stilt-borne body camouflaged among the leaves; and its moist velvet cheeks and liquid eyes; and she thought of all the beauty that there was in Africa, and of the laughter and the love.

"The boy looked at the basket. 'Is that true, Mma?'

"Mma Ramotswe smiled.

"'I hope so,' she said."

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