Hardback: Precious Ramotswe and Grace Makutsi, Gaborone's No 1 Lady Detectives, do not always agree on important issues - one being the complex male psyche. Grace believes that food is the source of men's happiness, while Precious takes a more nuanced view: men are not so different from women, they want to be loved and needed, too. It is pride that is so often their undoing.
Mma Ramotswe is reminded of this when her husband, J L B Matekoni, is offered a daunting business opportunity; one which, if it fails, threatens their existing livelihood, including the detective agency. Somehow, Precious must guide her husband to the right decision, while being mindful of how much he wants The Joy and Light Bus Company to succeed.
Meanwhile, there are other problems to solve. A wealthy client's elderly father has changed his will, making his devoted live-in nurse a significant beneficiary, and the ladies are tasked with uncovering the woman as a fraud. And then there is the disturbing rumoured maltreatment of children living and working on a local farm, which a concerned Mma Ramotswe is intent on investigating.
Professional and moral duty battles with female instinct and Mma Ramotswe is determined not to jump to conclusions until she has all the facts. She knows only too well how cunning people can be. After all, she herself is not beyond a little trickery - especially when it comes to righting wrongs and seeing justice served, or when innocent lives are at stake. All this and more in the twenty-second instalment of The Joy and Light Bus Company (2021).
The next and twenty-third instalment, A Song of Comfortable Chairs, will be released in September 2022.
About the author: Alexander McCall Smith, often referred to as ‘Sandy’, is one of the world’s most prolific and best-loved authors. His various series of books have been translated into forty-six languages and become bestsellers throughout the world. These include the highly successful The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, the popular 44 Scotland Street novels, the Isabel Dalhousie novels, the von Igelfeld series and the new Detective Varg novels. He also writes stand-alone novels, children's fiction and libretti for short operas.
Alexander has received numerous awards for his writing and holds thirteen honorary doctorates from universities in Europe and North America. He is Professor Emeritus of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. In 2007, he received a CBE for services to literature and in 2011 was honoured by the President of Botswana for services through literature to the country. In 2015, he received the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction and in 2017, The National Arts Club (of America) Medal of Honour for Achievement in Literature.
Rating: 5/5
No comments:
Post a Comment