'Detective' author a humorous optimist

CAMBRIDGE, England -- When Alexander McCall Smith is traveling the world promoting the best-selling novels in his hugely popular series, "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency," the reaction of fans often amuses him.

Some just can't believe that this 56-year-old man, who looks like an aging absent-minded professor, and who is a scholar in medical law, genetics and bioethics, has written the detective novels they love. People who have never been to sub-Saharan Africa, but who know about its many crises, want to know if Botswana is really as peaceful and idyllic as it is portrayed in McCall Smith's books.

But the fans who leave the affable Scottish author feeling uneasy are the ones who tell him how Precious Ramotswe, his gentle and humane heroine, has lifted them from despair.

"People will come up and say that they had long been depressed by today's rather cynical and skeptical world, but that Ramotswe's sincerity, her generosity of spirit in a country as poor as Botswana, had brought them bouncing back," McCall Smith says.

"It's quite sobering to realize that you might not have intended to do this, but you actually seemed to have affected peoples' lives."

McCall Smith, an optimist with sly humor and an explosive laugh, recently gave a speech at a Cambridge University fund-raiser for Africa that left a sold-out audience in stitches.

He joked about The Really Terrible Orchestra that he founded as a lousy bassoon player, about ways of quoting Proust like an intellectual without actually having read him and about putting tea and cake scenes in his books when he can't think of anything else to write about.

The "No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" series -- which caught on by word of mouth long after it began to be published in Scotland in limited editions in the mid-1990s -- has now sold more than 6 million copies, including 3.5 million in the United States, and is available in 32 languages.

The paperback of the fifth installment, "The Full Cupboard of Life" will be published in January in the United States, and the sixth novel in the series, "In the Company of Cheerful Ladies," will be sold in hardcover beginning April 19. Both books are available in Britain, with "Cheerful Ladies" to be sold here in paperback in March.

But fans have other options as well.

McCall Smith -- who has written more than 50 books and a serialized novel in his local newspaper in Edinburgh -- recently began publishing a new detective series, "The Sunday Philosophy Club," which focuses on another amateur sleuth, Isabel Dalhousie, who lives and works in the Scottish capital. The book is fast climbing best seller lists.

The question is whether that novel, or several other, older McCall Smith works now being brought back into print, will ever win the devotion that "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" has.

The "No. 1" series tells the story of Mma Ramotswe, an overweight - - or "traditionally built" -- self-taught detective who solves simple cases involving everything from disloyal husbands to missing persons. (Mma is a polite form of address in Setswana.)

The books aren't mysteries or detective novels in the traditional sense; they don't contain shoot outs, speed chases, autopsies or surprise endings. Instead, many readers are drawn to the gentleness, humanity and common sense of Ramotswe. As a detective, she shows forgiveness and understanding to characters who get into trouble, helping them resolve ordinary dilemmas and moral issues that have arisen in their daily lives.

Other characters include Ramotswe's fiance, Mr. J.L.B Matekoni, the kindly but disorganized owner of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors; Mma Makutsi, her clever but love-lost assistant; and Mma Potokwane, the devoted but pushy director of a local children's orphanage.

Like Mma Ramotswe, Isabel Dalhousie, the heroine of "The Sunday Philosophy Club," has a good sense of humor and is disappointed by the way today's "me-first" generation often discards traditional values, such as good manners and kindness. Dalhousie, though, is well off, well educated and serves as the editor of The Review of Applied Ethics in Edinburgh. She is incurably nosy, and her work as an amateur detective begins when she witnesses a gruesome death at a concert hall.

Without giving away the ending, Dalhousie, like Mma Ramotswe, knows when troubled people who made a mistake have learned from their errors.

McCall Smith, who has lived in Botswana and often visits the country, mentions crises and conditions such as AIDS, poverty and crime in the series, but he doesn't try to be a social realist.

"I don't want to mislead people as to what Africa's problems are. They are numerous and serious," says the author, who goes by the nickname Sandy. "But women in that part of the world can be very striking, very resourceful and impressive people, especially those who are raising large families on a shoestring without a husband."

McCall Smith was born in Zimbabwe (formerly known as Southern Rhodesia) and educated there and in Scotland. He became a law professor in Scotland, and it was in this role that he first returned to Africa to help set up a law school at the University of Botswana.

He is currently on leave as a professor of medical law at the University of Edinburgh, and he has worked as a visiting professor at several universities overseas, including Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law in Dallas. McCall Smith lives in Edinburgh with his wife, Elizabeth, a doctor, and their two college- age daughters, Lucy and Emily.

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