The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith

[meganbmoore]

The fourth No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is even less focused on the mystery than previous books, but that’s hardly a bad thing. Mma Ramotswe is still happily engaged, running her business, and taking care of her adopted children, but starting to wonder if her fiancé will ever set a wedding date. Meanwhile, she has a sexist-and glamorous-new rival, and her assistant Mma Makutsi, while deftly managing both the detective agency and Rra Maketoni’s garage, is feeling the money crunch and, realizing that only women go to typing schools, and so men aren’t taught to properly type, opens a typing school for men.

I find it interesting that both the third and fourth books in the series are titled after Mma Makutsi’s subplots instead of Mma Ramotswe’s main plots, but I can’t find any particular deeper meaning to it. As I mentioned, the mystery here, which involves a man with a misspent youth who wants to make amends, is very minor. There are more mysteries because the main character happens to be a detective than actual mystery novels. I continue to love the easy, deft characterization of Mma Ramotswe and then people in her life, as well as the “down home,” everyday life approach to Botswana and the people who live there, and so these books remain excellent comfort reads.

Comments

[lea_hazel]

I like to think of these books as the antidote to noir. Not that they're not plenty dark, this one being a prime example with the granddaughter of the landlady, for example. Still they avoid the trappings that have defined much of detective fiction, and manage to deal with the insurmountable troubles of the world from a point of view of hope.

I also like that Alexander McCall Smith approaches detection from a psychological perspective, and like Agatha Christie's books, the key to the mystery is frequently the motive.

[meganbmoore]

There's also the depression in the third book, and Mma Ramotswe's past. I think the significant difference, though, is that Smith's "dark" is "bad things happen to people, and they deal with it" and not "bad things happen to people and women who have sex die because that's dark and gritty and good storytelling" like most noir. (Noir: yet another genre I lov in theory but am less fond of in practice.)

[lea_hazel]

Yes, very frequently in noir the supposed "darkness" is glossy and superficial, concerned more with shady lighting and leggy broads in slinky dresses. Knock-off noir heroes tend to be too jaded to be affected by the tragedies that occur around them, and the victims are cheapened. My instincts say that true noir builds off a base of fear and compassion, not apathy, but I don't know many examples that work that way.