Alexander McCall Smith’s latest novel in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Series, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, is the Zimbabwe entry on my Around the World in 52 Countries challenge. These days, I kind of feel like Phil Keoghan from The Amazing Race, “this is the latest stop in a race around the world!” Heh.
Annnywaay. With familiar characters, the lead detective Mma Ramotswe, her husband Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, the associate detective/assistant Mma Makutsi, and many others, the story follows the same basic structure as the seven books before it, where the ‘mysteries’ more like moral lessons. Each character comes to his or her solution in a way that highlights the good characteristics of their personalities, all the while life goes on as normal in the small Botswana agency. As always, the books are more about life in Botswana perhaps, than about the problems the people bring to Mma Ramotswe and her co-workers.
In this particular story, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni discovers that he might like to try being a detective and has a case to himself, and while it doesn’t get solved in the traditional sense, a happy ending is found regardless. Reading McCall Smith is like drinking a large glass of lemonade on a hot day, it’s sweet, satisfying and never too tart for my liking. Although just like anything sweet in life, it’s easy to OD, so I’d take it one book at a time (over the course of a few months, at least) when reading this series, should the magic wear off, because who would want that?