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The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection
Cover of The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection
The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection
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THE NO. 1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY - Book 13

Fans around the world adore the best-selling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and its proprietor, Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma  Ramotswe—with help from her loyal associate, Grace Makutsi—navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, good humor, and the occasional cup of tea.
 
Precious Ramotswe is haunted by a repeated dream: a vision of a tall, strange man who waits for her beneath an acacia tree. Odd as this is, she’s far too busy to worry about it. The best apprentice at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors is in trouble with the law and stuck with the worst lawyer in Gaborone. Grace Makutsi and Phuti Radiphuti are building the house of their dreams, but their builder is not completely on the up and up. And, most shockingly, Mma Potokwane, defender of Botswana’s weak and downtrodden, has been dismissed from her post as matron at the orphan farm. Can the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency help restore the beloved matron to her rightful position?
 
As wealthy and powerful influences at the orphan farm become allied against their friend, help arrives from an unexpected visitor: the tall stranger from Mma Ramotswe’s dreams, who turns out to be none other than the estimable Clovis Andersen, author of the No. 1 Ladies’ prized manual, The Principles of Private Detection. Together, Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi, and their teacher-turned-colleague help right this injustice and in the process discover something new about being a good detective.
BONUS MATERIAL: This ebook edition includes an excerpt from Alexander McCall Smith's The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon.  

THE NO. 1 LADIES’ DETECTIVE AGENCY - Book 13

Fans around the world adore the best-selling No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series and its proprietor, Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma  Ramotswe—with help from her loyal associate, Grace Makutsi—navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, good humor, and the occasional cup of tea.
 
Precious Ramotswe is haunted by a repeated dream: a vision of a tall, strange man who waits for her beneath an acacia tree. Odd as this is, she’s far too busy to worry about it. The best apprentice at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors is in trouble with the law and stuck with the worst lawyer in Gaborone. Grace Makutsi and Phuti Radiphuti are building the house of their dreams, but their builder is not completely on the up and up. And, most shockingly, Mma Potokwane, defender of Botswana’s weak and downtrodden, has been dismissed from her post as matron at the orphan farm. Can the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency help restore the beloved matron to her rightful position?
 
As wealthy and powerful influences at the orphan farm become allied against their friend, help arrives from an unexpected visitor: the tall stranger from Mma Ramotswe’s dreams, who turns out to be none other than the estimable Clovis Andersen, author of the No. 1 Ladies’ prized manual, The Principles of Private Detection. Together, Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi, and their teacher-turned-colleague help right this injustice and in the process discover something new about being a good detective.
BONUS MATERIAL: This ebook edition includes an excerpt from Alexander McCall Smith's The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon.  

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Excerpts-
  • Chapter One In Botswana, home to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency for the problems of ladies, and others, it is customary—one might say very customary—to enquire of the people whom you meet whether they have slept well. The answer to that question is almost inevitably that they have indeed slept well, even if they have not, and have spent the night tossing and turning as a result of the nocturnal barking of dogs, the activity of mosquitoes or the prickings of a bad conscience. Of course, mosquitoes may be defeated by nets or sprays, just as dogs may be roundly scolded; a bad conscience, though, is not so easily stifled. If somebody were to invent a spray capable of dealing with an uncomfortable conscience, that person would undoubtedly do rather well—but perhaps might not sleep as soundly as before, were he to reflect on the consequences of his invention. Bad consciences, it would appear, are there for a purpose: to make us feel regret over our failings. Should they be silenced, then our entirely human weaknesses, our manifold omissions, would become all the greater—and that, as Mma Ramotswe would certainly say, is not a good thing.
     
    Mma Ramotswe was fortunate in having an untroubled con-science, and therefore generally enjoyed undisturbed sleep. It was her habit to take to her bed after a final cup of red bush tea at around ten o’clock at night. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, her husband and by common consent the finest mechanic in all Botswana, would often retire before her, particularly if he had had a tiring day at work. Mechanics in general sleep well, as do many others whose day is taken up with physically demanding labour. So by the time that Mma Ramotswe went to bed, he might already be lost to this world, his breathing deep and regular, his eyes firmly closed to the bedside light that he would leave for his wife to extinguish.
     
    She would not take long to go to sleep, drifting off to thoughts of what had happened that day; to images of herself drinking tea in the office or driving her van on an errand; to the picture of Mma Makutsi sitting upright at her desk, her large glasses catching the light as she held forth on some issue or other. Or to some memory of a long time ago, of her father walking down a dusty road, holding her hand and explaining to her about the ways of cattle—a subject that he knew so well. When a wise man dies, there is so much history that is lost: that is what they said, and Mma Ramotswe knew it to be true. Her own father, the late Obed Ramotswe, had taken so much with him, but had also left much behind, so many memories and sayings and observations, that she, his daughter, could now call up and cherish as she waited for the soft arms of sleep to embrace her.
     
    Mma Ramotswe did not remember her dreams for very long once she had woken up. Occasionally, though, an egregiously vivid dream might make such an impression that it lodged in her memory, and that is what happened that morning. It was not in any way a bad dream; nor was it a particularly good dream, the sort of dream that makes one feel as if one has been vouchsafed some great mystical insight; it was, rather, one of those dreams that seems to be a clear warning that something special is about to happen. If a dream involves lottery tickets and numbers, then its meaning is clear enough. This dream was not like that, and yet it left Mma Ramotswe feeling that she had somehow been given advance notice of something out of the ordinary, something important.
     
    In this dream she was walking along a path in the stretch of bush immediately behind Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, the building that the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective...
About the Author-
  • Alexander McCall Smith is also the author of the Isabel Dalhousie series, the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, the 44 Scotland Street series, and the Corduroy Mansions series. He is professor emeritus of medical law at the University of Edinburgh and has served with many national and international organizations concerned with bioethics. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe and taught law at the University of Botswana. He lives in Scotland.

Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    Starred review from March 5, 2012
    Smith wisely doesn’t tamper with his winning recipe for literary comfort food in his 13th excursion to Gaborone, Botswana, in the company of bighearted PI Precious Ramotswe (after 2011’s The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party). An unknown tall man appears in a dream to Mma Ramotswe, and before long, one shows up for real, in the person of American Clovis Andersen, author of the bible of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, The Principles of Private Detection. Invited to the country by a woman working on an American project to build school libraries, Anderson ends up assisting his biggest fan in looking into the dirty laundry of a businessman whose plans to make the local orphanage more efficient threaten the role of its matron and its successful operation. As always, the detection is secondary to Smith’s continuing exploration of the rhythms and social dynamics of smalltown African life. Agent: Robin Straus, Robin Straus Agency.

  • Kirkus

    March 15, 2012
    Three relatively ordinary cases for Botswana's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency are complicated by an altogether-extraordinary meeting. Mma Silvia Potokwane, the traditionally built matron of the orphan farm, tells Precious Ramotswe that there's something not quite right about board member Ditso Ditso, the well-known businessman who's insisted on building a central kitchen for the facility that will make food preparation and delivery more efficient but less loving. Soon enough, however, the matron has bigger problems to worry about: At the instance of Rra Ditso, she's fired from the job she thought she'd have forever. While Mma Ramotswe is digesting this sad news, she learns that Fanwell, the more industrious apprentice at her husband J.L.B. Matekoni's Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, has been arrested for doing illicit (and unwitting) mechanical work on stolen cars. There's even skullduggery afoot in the construction of the new home furniture dealer Phuti Radiphuti is building associate detective Grace Makutsi, whom he married at the end of The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party (2011). All this might well be overwhelming even for Mma Ramotswe, who's also headed for a rare adventure outside Gaborone, if she weren't fortified by support and wise counsel from Clovis Andersen. And not just from Andersen's tome The Principles of Private Detection, her own professional scripture, but from the author himself, who turns up in her office just in time to offer help as sententious and self-effacing as it is effective. Longer but not better than the 12 earlier accounts of the Agency. Few fans, however, will want to miss the byplay between Mma Ramotswe and her revered mentor.

    COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  • Booklist

    Starred review from March 15, 2012
    The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is located off a dusty, rutted road in cattle-rich Botswana, housed in a tiny office next to an auto-repair shop. Two women work there: Precious Ramotswe, who is Botswana's only private detective, and her associate, Grace Makutsi (now Mrs. Phuti Radiphuti). Grace never fails to mention her 97 percent average from the Botswana Secretarial College to everyone who enters. And, it seems, everyone does: women worried that their men are philandering; people concerned over their relatives' disappearances; seekers of goods and lost people. Part of the brilliance of this series (now in its thirteenth entry) is that what may seem like tiny cases expand into considerations of virtue, love, ambition, greed, and evil. And these meditations on life come as naturally as Precious looking up into the blue Botswana sky. In the latest, the person who has been Precious' and Grace's most quoted and most esteemed fellow detective enters the premisesClovis Andersen, author of The Principles of Private Detection. Now Precious can consult with the great man himself (who shows a surprising forgetfulness about passages in his own book) about two troubling crises in her own life. A wealthy businessman has fired Precious' longtime friend Mma Potokwane, the director of the orphan farm, and one of the apprentices at Speedy Motors has been wrongly accused of a crime. The trio embark on these cases with gusto. McCall Smith's novels are both very meditative and laugh-out-loud funny. If you've never read a No. 1 Ladies', now's the time. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: McCall Smith's latest Precious Ramotswe novel will get all the marketing attention it deserves, but it hardly needs much. Just hang the open-for-business sign on the door of the Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency, and the fans will come.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

  • Los Angeles Times "Smart and sassy . . . with the power to amuse or shock or touch the heart, sometimes all at once."
  • USA Today "Enthralling . . . Mma Ramotswe is someone readers can't help but love."
  • The Christian Science Monitor "A potent mix of charm and whimsy."
  • The Dallas Morning News "Endearing, amusing . . . sparkles with African sunshine and wit."
  • Publishers Weekly "McCall Smith makes the sublime look easy . . . [He] has few peers in capturing the quiet moments of people's lives, and his empathetic lead has one of the biggest hearts in modern literature."
  • The Seattle Times "Charming and hilarious . . . Sweet and timeless."
  • St. Petersburg Times "A cast of characters who seem like old and cherished friends."
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Alexander McCall Smith
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