NOVEL THOUGHTS
………
ANCHOR, 1998
(available in paperback from Anchor, 2003)
MMA PRECIOUS RAMOTSWE’S calling is to help her people solve the mysteries in their lives, so she becomes the first female private detective in Botswana. African-born Alexander McCall Smith introduces Mma Ramotswe in The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, the first in a series of novels about the private investigator.
Following a disastrous marriage to an abusive husband and the death of her father, middle-aged Mma Ramotswe sets out to rebuild her life. She invests her inheritance in a home on Zebra Drive in Gaborone, Botswana’s capital, and purchases an abandoned store on the edge of town, where she sets up her detective agency. Although she has no formal training for the job, she learns in a private detection manual that hunches and intuition, which she possesses in abundance, are the real requirements for a successful detective. What her office lacks in physical assets it makes up for in its magnificent view of acacia trees and the hills on the horizon—and in the keen intellect of its only detective.
Mma Ramotswe soon finds clients at her door, all with seemingly ordinary problems: a wife searching for her vanished husband; a father seeking knowledge of his daughter’s boyfriend; a hospital investigating a doctor’s questionable performance. Mma Ramotswe quickly proves her skills at cracking cases by relying on her feminine intuition, wisdom, logic, and her inherent understanding of people. Mma Ramotswe is most preoccupied with the moral questions behind each case, and often offers direct and practical advice to her clients in addition to solving their crimes. She quickly resolves most of her cases, but the solution to a more serious mystery, the disappearance of a young boy, eludes her.
Mma Ramotswe enjoys life’s simple pleasures: a pot of tea, which she shares with clients and friends, and a pot of stew. A teapot and three mugs are a few of the items on the small inventory list for her detective agency.
“Bush tea is very important to Mma Ramotswe and her assistant, Mma Makutsi,” explains McCall Smith. “It is a reddish tea, caffeine-free, which is also known as rooibos, or red bush tea. It is an acquired taste, and may be drunk with honey, in which case it is called honeybush tea.”
Mma Ramotswe offers her own advice about bush tea. When asked if bush tea is better with honey or without, she responds:
If anybody says to you: You should not add honey to bush tea! You can reply: The people who grow that tea add honey, so why can’t I? That should end the argument. If the people continue to argue, then you should tell them to quiet.
Mma Ramotswe prepares her favorite comfort food, a pot of stewed pumpkin, as she contemplates her cases. “She loved standing in the kitchen, stirring the pot, thinking over the events of the day,” writes McCall Smith. Pumpkin gives her food for thought:
It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin.
We created a delicious pumpkin soup that we think Mma Ramotswe would savor. Make a pot of the soup when you’re in need of contemplation. Honey makes a nice topping for this soup, along with peanuts. And if anyone argues, tell them to “quiet.”
3 tablespoons butter 2 large shallots, chopped 1 large red onion, chopped 1 carrot, diced 1 29-ounce can puréed pumpkin 3 tablespoons tomato paste 3 cups chicken or vegetable broth 2 cups water 3 teaspoons chili powder |
1 teaspoon ground coriander ¼ teaspoon ground cardamom ¼ teaspoon ground cloves 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1 teaspoon sugar Salt and pepper 1 cup chopped roasted salted peanuts 2½ tablespoons honey (optional) |
Melt the butter in a stockpot. Add the shallots, onion, and carrot and sauté until soft, about 10 minutes.
Add the pumpkin, tomato paste, broth, water, chili powder, coriander, cardamom, cloves, cumin, and sugar. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, 30 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Ladle into bowls. Sprinkle liberally with peanuts and top each serving with 1 teaspoon honey if desired.
Yield: 8 servings
NOVEL THOUGHTS
The Four Major Food Groups and Literary Society of Anchorage, Alaska, began as a dinner club but quickly evolved into a book group. The nine-member club has its own definition of the four major food groups—salt, sugar, fat, and chocolate—and all four are in abundance when the club meets.
Member Dana Stabenow, an Edgar Award–winning mystery author, enjoys the escape from crime fiction offered by her book club, which reads women’s fiction, science fiction, biographies, and history. They made an exception, however, for No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, a mystery that quickly became a club favorite. “Alexander McCall Smith has a wonderful you-are-there descriptive style. Now we all want to visit Botswana,” says Stabenow.
The Four Major Food Groups and Literary Society all admired McCall Smith’s detective, Mma Ramotswe, for “her strength, her humor, and for embracing private investigation as a way of bringing people’s lives into order,” says Stabenow. “Yet even she can be snookered,” she says, referring to one case where Mma Ramotswe is outwitted. The group also explored whether the episodic structure of the book worked, as compared to one overall story arc, and agreed that it did.
Suspense was in the air the night the group met to discuss No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency: They turned themselves into food detectives and created a mystery-ingredient dinner to complement their discussion. “We had to solve the mystery of the key ingredient in each dish,” says Stabenow, “and one member’s was pumpkin, a favorite of Mma Ramotswe.”
Kathy Barber’s menu for the South Florida Preschool PTA Book Club’s discussion of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency featured foods mentioned in the mystery: pumpkin seeds, candy pumpkins, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bars, brown rice with small chunks of honeydew and cantaloupe melon, and a fruit and melon salad. For drinks, Barber created her own South African Lion Beer by placing Lion stickers on cans of Budweiser, and served South African wines. She also served the red bush tea Mma Ramotswe adores and gave each guest red bush tea as a party favor.
The African feast was served on a blue cloth, because Mma Ramotswe’s wedding dinner was served on one. To create the atmosphere of a detective agency, the board game Clue was displayed, along with large magnifying glasses, and a chalk body outline was drawn on the tile floor.
Taking the mystery theme to another level, book group members came dressed as their favorite detective or crime fighter, including Nancy Drew, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, Miss Marple, Magnum PI, and Mma Ramotswe. Barber, attired in a trench coat and a fedora and carrying a stuffed eagle, was Sam Spade of The Maltese Falcon.
BUSH TEA
Bush tea is made from the tips of leaves of red bush, or rooibos. Discovered thousands of years ago, rooibos remains one of the most popular herbs in South Africa, commonly used for food coloring or flavoring as well as for tea. Grown in the Western Cape region of South Africa, the naturally caffeine-free tea is thought to have health-giving properties. Red bush tea is now widely available in the United States at grocery stores.