1 Ladies' Detective Agency is a series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith set in Botswana and featuring the character Mma Precious Ramotswe.
Mma Ramotswe starts up her detective agency using the inheritance from her father to move to the capital city, Gaborone, to buy a house for herself and an office for her new business.
Mma Precious Ramotswe solves cases for wives whose husbands have gone missing, for a school teacher whose son has disappeared, by finding the kidnappers, for a wealthy father whose 16-year-old daughter is frustrating him by going out on her own.
Her joy is her engagement and eventual marriage to Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, who has taken on foster care of a sister and brother from the orphan farm.
1 Ladies' Detective Agency, was a surprise hit [in Scotland], receiving two special Booker citations and a place on the Times Literary Supplement's International Books of the Year and the Millennium list."
The books went from underground hits to national phenomena in the United States, spawning fan clubs and inspiring celebratory reviews.
[6] In reviewing the fifth novel in the series, Marcel Berlins describes the pathway of the growing audience, requiring one to understand that although Scotland and England are part of the same kingdom, the residents do not read the same books at the same time.
"This novel by an eminent Scottish law professor about a woman detective in Botswana is the fifth in a series, the other four having largely escaped English attention (and availability).
The Scots have had better luck: they've known about McCall Smith for several years, but it has taken his extraordinary and unexpected success in the US for word to have filtered back to England that he's a treasure of a writer whose books deserve immediate devouring.
"[1] Marcel Berlins finds the protagonist of The Full Cupboard of Life to be the "magnificent Mma Ramotswe" who operates on intuition and common sense, skilled without much education or special training.
[7] The novels have been reviewed in other languages than the original English; for example, this generally favourable review of the series up to the novel published in 2014, The Handsome Man's De Luxe Café, in a Czech online magazine: "Alexander McCall Smith, however, can enrich the stories of his everyday heroes with a profoundly human understanding of man's weaknesses".
The BBC and American television network HBO filmed a series based on the books that stars Jill Scott as Mma Ramotswe and was shot on location in Botswana.