Rating: 
Summary: Charming
Review: A deightful easy read that will chase away all your troubles. I'm now a great fan of the # 1 Ladies Detective Agency and have read all three books in the series. I hope that there will be many more wonderful adventures with Mma. Ramotswe----soon, now that I'm hooked!
Rating:
Summary: i'm in love
Review: I can only describe this book as darling. Precious Ramotswe, "a good fat woman" is a wonderful character. She's smart, brave, resourceful and likes herself just as she is. The story of her daddy and the unnamed cousin who raised her is extremely touching as is the section on her genteele, cautious romance with the owner of the local garage. Mma Ramotswe tackles mysteries short, complex, funny and frightening. She deals with deadly witch doctors, crocodiles, con men and womanizers all with the same cool head.
I just loved her and this book.
Rating:
Summary: Charming, well-written, interesting
Review: This is a charming story, with funny bits, a pleasure to read. So good in fact, that I immediately bought the other volumes. I hope the author writes as many books about the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency as Agatha Christie wrote about her sleuths. Not only are these good stories about interesting people, the information about Botswana is intriguing and makes me curious. I'd like to learn more. Like another reviewer of this book, I have an additional recommendation to make. If you really like mysteries and good writing, be sure to read Robert Barnard's books. They are excellent.
Rating:
Summary: Really nice writing
Review: You'll love it all! The descriptions the characters and, above all, the story. The author writes with such beautiful simplicity that you won't want to put it down till it's all done. That's a guarantee. If you've ever been interested in Africa, you just can't miss this one. I eager to see what comes next. A definite must!! And if you're looking for a few other great titles, look no further than these, Buckland's Hot List: most creative, The Butterfly: A Fable (Singh); most engaging, The Alchemist (Coelho); most interesting, Life of Pi (Martel); most enlightening, 9-11 (Chomsky); most thrilling, The Lovely Bones: A Novel (Sebold); and finally, the most creative, engaging, interesting, enlightening and thrilling book of all, The Little Prince (Saint-Exupery). These are the books I'd recommend to my family, friends, students, and wife. There are many more, trust me, but these are the first that come to mind (for having left an impact slight or proud as it may be). If you have any questions, queries, or comments, or maybe even a title you think I should add to my list, please feel free to e-mail me. I'm always open to a good recommendation. Thanks for reading my brief but hopefully helpful review. Happy reading. Donald S. Buckland.
Rating:
Summary: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Review: Okay, I have read and enjoyed the first three, listed here plus Tears of the Giraffe and whatever the third was called. My daughter has it right now. A gentle series about a really not understood part of the world. It's also a sort of rally for fat people, or as it is put in the series, traditional size ladies. Botswana sounds like a little piece of heaven in the disaster that is sub-Saharan Africa.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, Enchanting and Satisfying!
Review: Satisfaction Guaranteed for All Parties" reads the sign on The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and so should the cover of the book! Following the adventures of lady detective Ramotswe was a delight. The short adventures, insights to human nature, and the matter-of-fact approach to her work will charm any reader. Smith captures and conveys some of the subtle African nuances of life in this book. You will definitely like this entertaining work whether or not you like mysteries.
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely Charming.
Review: A wonderfully guiless and charming little book. I fail to see how anyone would not enjoy this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Pleasant But Tediously Thin
Review: This book received two Booker Judges' Special Recommendations in 1999 and was voted one of the International Books of the Year and the Milennium by the Times Literary Supplement, which can either be explained by British sentimentality or British condescension, but not by any special literary qualities. If you're looking for the Botswana version of Miss Read, this is your book. This isn't Inspector Morse transposed to Africa but tales of English village life, and the result is, to say the least, disorienting. Furthermore, the "cases" that Mma Ramotswe, No. 1 Ladies' Detective, investigates make the Hardy Boys look like Sam Spade. Mma Ramotswe drinks bush tea, not Twinings, but reading this book is like slowly drowning in a weak brew with far too much milk and sugar.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!
Review: An absolutely wonderful start to what is hopefully is a long-running detective series set in modern Botswana. This fast-reading book isn't so much a set piece mystery as it is the story of an African woman in her late thirties who stakes her entire inheritance on the crazy idea of becoming the country's first woman private detective. Precious Ramotswe is a intelligent "traditionally built" woman with a keen sense of human nature and a desire to help people in distress. This book tells of her childhood, her loving miner father, an ill-considered marriage to a trumpeter, her strong belief in her own abilities, and skeptical take on the forces of progress and modernization. This volume contains her first cases, which she adroitly solves with the assistance of her expert typist secretary and the local master mechanic, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni.But the book is not just about her, but also aims to portray a positive picture of modern Africa, one all too rarely seen in the West. The cases often intertwine with issues such as development, social structures, power, and gender, but in a disarmingly light and gentle way. Among her tasks are to find a missing husband, investigate a doctor, follow a teenage girl, and find a missing boy who may have been kidnapped by a witch doctor. None of these are particularly convoluted, and Precious's greatest difficulty often lies in determining exactly what to tell her client in order to effect the best result for all concerned and achieve cosmic justice. The stories are delivered in a delightfully fluid and simple prose with pacing that makes the book quite difficult to put down. The series thankfully continues with Tears of the Giraffe and The Kalahari Typing School For Men, with further volumes to follow one hopes.
Rating:
Summary: Utterly charming!
Review: "Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill. These were its assets: a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter." So begins Alexander McCall Smith's charming novel, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Precious Ramotswe grew up in Botswana, an African country that has known relative peace compared to its more unlucky neighbors. When her father dies after a hard life as a miner, Precious inherits a decent sum of money left her by him. Mma Ramotswe invests it all in a rather unusual business-a detective agency proudly named "The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency." Business is brisk for Mma Ramotswe and she gets right down to it with a trusty "detective manual" by her side. In real life, however, it is not simply bookish knowledge that matters. Ramotswe is a special combination of resource, intelligence, and will. She solves her cases with ample common sense and bravery. Smith's novel, set in the Africa of the 90's, is no hard-boiled thriller. Instead most of Ramotswe's cases depict the many foibles of the human character-cheating husbands, insurance scams and even distrustful fathers. The book's language is wonderfully simple and direct. The individual "mysteries" are good stand-alone short stories in their own right. Interspersed amongst them are pictures of a beautiful country, Botswana, and the quiet grace of its people. Mma Ramotswe's everyday interactions with her fellow citizens are captured wonderfully. Ramotswe meets life with smart sensibilities and a wry sense of humor. She is comfortable in her ample frame (a size 22) and proud of her Africa. She "did not want Africa to change. She did not want her people to become like everybody else, soulless, selfish, forgetful of what it means to be an African, or, worse still, ashamed of Africa." In a crazed rushed world, Mma Ramotswe stands for everything right about a less frenetic pace of life. In her, McCall Smith has created a perfect embodiment of Africa. Mr. Smith, who has enjoyed some schooling in Zimbabwe but is a Scot himself, has done a great job both in portraying Botswana and in creating a beautiful portrait of a strong woman. I enjoyed the trip immensely. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is just the right book for a lazy weekend afternoon. I especially recommend it with a side of Mma Ramotswe's favorite drink, a steaming cup of redbush tea!
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