Last summer, when I was recuperating from surgery, a friend sent me a care package that included the book, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Hooked from the first page, I read each installment in the eight-book series back-to-back.

I was lured by author Alexander McCall Smith’s main character, Precious Ramotswe, called Mma. Ramotswe in the story. A woman of traditional build, as she describes herself, Mma. Ramotswe uses her innate kindness and intelligence to solve the mysteries that  are brought to her agency — the first and only ladies’ detective agency in Botswana.

These are no Mission Impossible-type cases where dead bodies crop up or bullets fly through the streets. Mma. Ramotswe’s cases are  everyday mysteries like missing persons cases and embezzlement.

After eight books in the series, Smith returns with his ninth release, The Miracle at Speedy Motors, which will be available Tuesday, April 15.

In his latest Mma. Ramotswe saga, the author once again employs his poignant and practical prose that make the books a joy to read.

As the tale opens, Mma. Ramotswe and Mma. Grace Makutsi, her associate detective, are receiving threatening letters.

“Fat lady: you watch out! And you too, the one with the big glasses. You watch out too!,” reads a note left at the detective agency.

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BSI-Starside: Final Inquiries
By Roger MacBride Allen
Bantam Spectra, 2008
Paperback, $6.99
421 pages
If you’re looking for something light, not too disturbing, that combines police procedurals with speculative science fiction, this may be worth picking up.
“Final Inquiries” seems to be the second in a series about a couple of “space-cops,” as it were, in an organization called the Bureau of Special Investigations, which has the duty of looking into crimes involving humans outside of the Earth system and those that involve interactions between humans and alien intelligent beings.
Allen is the spouse of a U.S. Foreign Service operative, and he uses that experience to build interesting details into this particular work, involving high-stakes interstellar diplomacy and death.
The human heroes of the story are Hannah Wolfson, the senior BSI agent, and Jamie Mendez. (Romance isn’t really a factor in this story.)

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