Book Review: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

I'm sure many of you have already read Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. I finally got around to it while on our vacation.

I found myself smiling at the quaintness of the stories and the intelligence and grace of the main character, Mma (Precious) Ramotswe. She takes the inheritance left her by her beloved father and uses it to set up a small detective agency - just herself and a secretary.

Turns out, she is a born detective. She has the power to outwit even the most evil of wrongdoers without using complicated, convoluted thinking. Her cases range from the sublime to the ridiculous, and each and every one is intriguing to read about.

My only complaint about the book is that the writing seemed choppy to me. When I give writing lessons to my students, we discuss the importance of sentence fluency. Upon reading The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, I can't help but thinking that Smith must have been absent from school during those lessons. Still, he may have been doing it purposely, depicting the way Mma Ramotswe would speak English, as it would not be her native tongue. If you've read it, let me know what you think.