The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency often helps people find things they have lost. But they have never had to help a client find herself—until now, in this latest installment of Alexander McCall Smith’s best-selling and beloved series.
A kindhearted brother and sister have taken in a woman known only as “Mrs.”—a woman with no memory of her name or of how she came to Botswana. And so it’s up to Precious Ramotswe and her new co-director, Grace Makutsi, to discover the woman’s identity.
Meanwhile, motherhood proves to be no obstacle to Mma Makutsi’s professional success. As she settles into her role as partner at the agency, she also launches a new enterprise of her own: the Handsome Man’s De Luxe Café, a restaurant for Gaborone’s most fashionable diners. But even Miss 97 Per Cent isn’t fully prepared for the temperamental chefs, drunken waiters, and other challenges that come with running one’s own business. Help may come from an unexpected source, if only Mma Makutsi can swallow her pride and ask.
And next door to the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni is all too familiar with the difficult decisions of business owners. He is finally forced to make a tough choice, one that will bring major changes to both Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors and the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency—and that will require all of Mma Ramotswe’s finesse and patience to sort out.
With sympathy and indefatigable good humor, Mma Ramotswe and her friends see one another through these major changes and discover along the way what true friendship really means.
Next in an enjoyable series My wife has been reading this series since its early days. I first came to know about it when she noticed and wanted to watch the excellent cable movies made from some of the early books.The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency stories are full of good sense, intelligence, warmth, and humor. “Handsome Man’s DeLuxe Cafe”, eagerly awaited by series fans, provides the same charm and wit that we expect from McCall Smith. As a bonus, you get a welcome sense of lifestyle from an area of the world…
“…like the welcoming lights of home in the darkness” Thank you, Alexander McCall Smith,for 227 pages of time with dear friends and another wonderful Botswana story. Precious remains someone we love to spend time with, and Mr. JLB Matekoni is still the good man we respect, who loves Precious and does what is right. But despite his statement that he is one of those people who is not modern (“we do not want things to move forwards at all”), Mr. JLB Matekoni faces the need to make a dramatic change at Speedy Motors.As a result, change…