McCall Smith displays an affectionate and humorous touch in bringing to life a small African town, and animates disappearing values. In a world fraught with selfishness, “a consequence of increasing prosperity”, Mma is a comforting figure who reassures us with her unassuming acceptance of old-world morality. Unlike most of us, she is sure of who she is. “Knowledge of this sort helped to keep society together and made it difficult to scrape the car of another without feeling guilty about it and without doing something to let the owner know.” And every morning Mma Ramotswe switches on Radio Botswana “in time for the opening chorus of the national anthem and the recording of cattle bells.” And Mma is far from being a hidebound conservative: witness her decisions to establish the first detective agency, to hire a female assistant, and to adopt two orphans.

A moral and good life can be built by being neighbourly, loyal, honourable, generous, and loving one’s country. These traditional values, together with shunning the new deadly sins for a globalised world such as accumulating obscene wealth, causing social injustice, polluting the environment, among others, form the moral core of Mma and her team. Like the private detectives of Raymond Chandler and S. Dashiell Hammett, Ramotswe has a strong sense of right and wrong. “A good person would cut the doughnut into two equal pieces” but a shifty selfish person would divide into two pieces, one would be bigger than the other, and he would take that one himself.

... contd.