The Colors of All the Cattle by Alexander McCall Smith

I have written many times about my love of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books and that meeting author Alexander McCall Smith (here) is one of the highlights of my literary life.

In this latest installment, The Colors of All the Cattle, there are plenty of cups of red bush tea, generous slices of Mma Potokwane's cake, and the lenses of Mma Makutsi's glasses still flash a danger signal when she is upset. And, finally, Charlie, mechanic apprentice and detective in training, gets a serious girlfriend. He is also instrumental in solving the case of the hit-and-run motorist.

But it was the main thrust of the story that resonated with me. As it happens, Mma Ramotswe is reluctantly running for a seat on Gaborone's City Council. This is at the urging of Mma Potokwane, matron of the Orphan Farm - as insistent as only she can be. Her reasons for encouraging Mma Ramotswe in this endeavor are two-fold: one, that arch nemesis of Mma Makutsi and pretty much every one associated with the detective agency, Violet Sephotho, is running for the same seat and who knows what havoc she would wreak as a council member.

The other reason Mma P. is so adamant that her friend should run is her strong opposition to a developer's proposed building of a garish Big Fun Hotel next to a town cemetery. In a country that holds great reverence for its late family and friends, this will never do.

We are facing a similar issue here in Louisville. A developer wants to build a 33-story condo/apartment/retail center right at the entrance to one of our fine Frederick Law Olmsted parks. It would loom over our historic Cave Hill Cemetery.

Believe me, people - and I include myself - are quite upset about this and although there have been many meetings with the developer he seems unwilling to amend his plans.

The property is actually quite small. A mere triangle of land. To me, the design looks like someone attempting to stuff ten pounds of potatoes (although that is not the word I usually use) into a five pound bag. You get the picture.

To give you an idea of the scale of this monstrosity, the tallest building in Louisville, a downtown tower, is 35 stories. It fits in with other commercial buildings in the city center. Thirty-three stories in a residential area is outrageous. Not to mention that my family and I own 'property' in Cave Hill Cemetery and we would all be resting in the shadow of such a monolith for eternity.

The plans have not been approved by the planning commission and city council as yet, but this same developer recently got approval to tear down a three-story apartment building in a nearby residential area and is planning to build a 15-story condominium in its place. That was opposed by the neighborhood association (it took the developer to court and lost) and many residents of the area. 

But, back to Mma Ramotswe and her friends. Over tea, they spend time musing about greedy property developers, the difference between good progress and bad progress, the honesty or dishonesty of politicians, and the importance of voting in civic elections.

I won't tell you how things turn out for Mma Ramotswe and Gaborone and the late residents of the cemetery as that would spoil your enjoyment of this book. 

But, even if your city or town is not being overrun by concrete and glass high-rise buildings, I think you will be entertained by this tale. It is a charmer.

Post-Holiday Post

As noted a few weeks ago, as a Christmas gift to myself, I hired a professional organizer to help me get rid of the overflow of stuff around the house. (here) So while most people have been dashing about malls and department stores in a shopping frenzy, I have been busy getting rid of things. 

Lori the Organizer and I have had four sessions of two hours each. That's about all I can deal with at one time. We have attacked the clothes closet, the pantry/laundry space, and the kitchen cabinets and drawers. Yesterday, we dealt with what the dust bunnies had been guarding under the bed, and we sorted through a few shelves of notebooks, gift bags, tissue paper, and canvas tote bags. 

Whew. In all, she has carried away two bins of clothes and shoes, five large tote bags of kitchen and pantry stuff, and yesterday, two bags of linens and the other miscellaneous items that had been hiding behind closed doors.

Add to that a trash bag or two and the house does seem to be a bit lighter. 

I decided early on into the process that I wasn't going to worry about sorting out books. They are not clutter. Well, most of them anyway. My one rule - made after I tearfully waved goodbye to a jean jacket from the '80s - was that if it made me cry to get rid of an item then that item stayed! 

I have also spent many hours on my own sorting, organizing, and tossing art and craft supplies. That in itself was a gargantuan task, but I do believe for the moment that area of my life is tidy.

I tell you all this because with the holidays and the clearing out project, I haven't had much time to read - or honestly to even think about reading - except at bedtime.

I did keep warm and cozy under the covers with Alexander McCall Smith's latest No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency mystery The House of Unexpected Sisters. In this adventure, Mma Ramostwe has an unsettling family mystery of her own to solve so she turns over the case of a woman who was allegedly fired from her job for an unjust reason to her agency partner Grace Makutsi. After many cups of tea and a slice or two of Mma Potokwani's delicious fruit cake, both mysteries are solved and all ends well.

Just last night I finished A Fool and His Monet by Sandra Orchard. Serena Jones is an FBI agent with the Art Crime Team. She joined the investigative agency in hopes of one day solving the murder of her grandfather by an art thief during a robbery. The action in the first of this promising series takes place in St. Louis. There are a few stereotypical characters - Serena's mother reminds her often how she would love to have grandchildren; her goofy Aunt Martha loves a good mystery and somehow entangles herself in this one; and, of course, there are two handsome men who could possibly provide romance. But, that said, I enjoyed the puzzle and quite liked Serena.

**********

On a sad note, a favorite author and fellow Louisvillian Sue Grafton died over the holidays. I have read and enjoyed all of her Kinsey Millhone books up through V is for Vendetta. I once lived near Santa Barbara - her fictional Santa Teresa - and it was fun to read about and recognize those familiar coastal locales in her books. Her last mystery, published in August 2017, was Y is for Yesterday so I do have a few 'letters' left to read. 

As her family said after her death, for them, and many of Ms. Grafton's fans, the alphabet now ends in Y.

I snapped this (somewhat fuzzy) photo of Sue Grafton

in November 2013 at the Kentucky Book Fair.

In Which I Muse on Commas

I attended a luncheon today and the business women at my table were questioning me about being a writer. Do I tape or write my interview notes by hand? (By hand in a composition notebook using a mechanical pencil.) Do I have all my questions written up before hand? (I will have a list of questions to start with but know that the interview could go just about anywhere so I like to leave space for surprises.) Do I favor the Oxford comma? (Of course. I am old school.)

In case you don't know, the Oxford comma is the comma placed before the and in a series of three or more terms. You can see that I use it in the title of Belle, Book, and Candle. Oddly enough, one publication I write for uses the Oxford comma and another doesn't. 

I admitted to the women that even after all these years I sometimes get confused on correct comma usage and therefore I keep a spray bottle of commas on my desk. When I have finished a story, I just squirt some of the cute little marks into the text in case I missed any.

This is why I was glad to pick up a new book from the library, Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen by Mary Norris. Ms. Norris is a writer and a copy editor for The New Yorker and is known for her columns on grammar and punctuation. This is her first book and I can hardly wait to read it. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., the publisher, writes this on its website about Ms. Norris and the book:

Down-to-earth and always open-minded, she draws on examples from Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, and the Lord's Prayer as well as from The Honeymooners, The Simpsons, David Foster Wallace, and Gillian Flynn.

(Notice the use of the Oxford comma.)

The reader is also promised a tour of a pencil-sharpener museum. How can you beat that? 

I will give a full report soon.

My bedtime reading is based on my recent Close Encounter with Alexander McCall Smith and I am re-investigating his No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. The library has in its ebook collection all fifteen tales of Mma Ramotswe's adventures as Botswana's only female detective. It is a pleasure to once again read AMS's loving descriptions of Africa and watch how he develops the characters. I enjoy the little mysteries and their solutions. Mma Ramotswe almost always opts for the kindest way of helping her clients even when the news is bad. I am now in the middle of book three, Morality for Beautiful Girls. 

I do believe that Mr. McCall Smith favors the Oxford comma. Just in case you were wondering.

The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith

Even a traditionally built woman such as Mma Precious Ramotswe can jump...to conclusions, that is. As Botswana's clever detective discovers, even after the most careful investigation, sometimes what seems to be the truth isn't always. 

In the latest book about the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith, the detectives are baffled by a case of the anonymous character assassination of the owner of the Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon (that gives the novel its title). Then there is the client who hires Mma Ramatswe to verify the identity of a young man who has inherited a farm from his uncle. Could the nephew be an impostor or does the client stand to gain in some way by proving that he is?

There are a few new characters introduced and, of course, there are the regulars that make this series such a delight: the prickly associate detective Mma Makutsi; her gentle husband Phuti Radiphuti; and Mr. J.L.B. Maketoni, husband of Mma Ramostswe, who owns the Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors and is concerned that he is not a 'modern husband'. 

Over the course of the investigation of these newest cases, there is a deepening of the friendship and respect between Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi as each woman learns a lesson or two from the other. Quite a reminder of how valuable some friendships can be.

I love settling in with these citizens of Botswana. Mr. McCall Smith writes with such tenderness for his characters. And, somehow, he can make even an episode of Mma Ramotswe getting stuck in the mud in her little white van amusing and enchanting at the same time.  

As always, during the investigations there are many cups of tea, slices of cake filled with sultanas, talk of cattle, musings on life and human nature, and bumpy rides in the little white van that Mma R. feels such an affection for. I am always happy to be along with her for the ride.

Calculating the Cups

Alexander McCall Smith
Author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
series

Yesterday I ended my post with a question:

How many cups of bush tea will it take before all these dilemmas are sorted out?

The person with the dilemmas is Mma Ramotswe, owner of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency in The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection by Alexander McCall Smith.

When I posed the question about the tea, it wasn't until later in the evening that I turned the page and discovered the very next chapter was called "How Many Cups of Tea...." in which Mma Ramotwe and her assistant Mma Grace Makutsi discuss that very question on their way in the little white van to the edge of the Kalahari to find the matron of the children's orphanage.

They start to count the number of cups of red bush tea that Mma Ramotswe drinks each day. Turns out it is about ten. And that is before the evening tea, so about fourteen cups each day. Mma Makutski quickly calculated and rounded that out to one hundred cups of tea per week.

"One hundred cups," repeated Mma Ramotswe. "That will be doing me a lot of good. One hundred cups of red bush tea, Mma. The bush tea is full of good things. It will be making me very strong." She paused. "I am not ashamed of all that tea, Mma."

"Of course not," said Mma Makutsi. "There is nothing to be ashamed of in drinking one hundred cups of tea a week, Mma. Which is..." She paused again. "More than five thousand cups of tea a year. That is very impressive."

I am happy to report that the tea works; all the problems were sorted out.

Now, I will be drinking tea while waiting for the next installment in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.

A Cup of Bush Tea Soothes the Nerves

Things are not boding well for Mma Ramotswe and her people in Gaborone, Botswana. The owner of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency faces many troubles in the latest adventure, The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection.

On a good note, she and her assistant/secretary Mma Grace Makutsi receive a surprise visit from someone they greatly admire and never thought they would meet.

On a not so good note, one of Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni's apprentices finds himself in a spot of trouble with the law - of course he is innocent, but will the court see it that way? And, the children's orphanage is facing big changes that are not really for the good of the children but perhaps more for the good of the pockets of one of the members of the board.

Oh dear, oh dear. Precious Ramotswe has her hands full. Her spirits are down and it is hot. How many cups of bush tea will it take before all these dilemmas get sorted out?

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection

"In Botswana, home to the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency for the problems of ladies, and others, it is customary - one might say very customary - to enquire of the people whom you meet whether they have slept well. The answer to that question is almost inevitably that they have indeed slept well, even if they have not, and have spent the night tossing and turning as a result of the nocturnal barking of dogs, the activity of mosquitoes or the prickings of a bad conscience. Of course, mosquitoes may be defeated by nets or sprays, just as dogs may be roundly scolded; a bad conscience, though, is not so easily stifled. If somebody were to invent a spray capable of dealing with an uncomfortable conscience, that person would undoubtedly do rather well -- but perhaps not sleep as soundly as before, were he to reflect on the consequences of his invention. Bad consciences, it would appear, are there for a purpose: to make us feel regret over our failings. Should they be silenced, then our entirely human weaknesses, our manifold omissions, would become all the greater -- and that, as Mma Ramotswe would certainly say, is not a good thing."

Ahhhh. It is always a good day when Mma Ramotswe's newest adventure shows up at the library. I have had The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection by Alexander McCall Smith on hold for months and then, joy. The book is now in my hands.

The quote above is the first paragraph of the first chapter.

I know that there will be puzzles and philosophy to ponder. I know that while being in the company of Precious Ramotswe, her dear husband Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, and her assistant Grace Makutsi,  my breathing will slow down, my heart rate will drop, and my blood pressure will fall. Such is the peacefulness that overcomes me when I read the books in this series.

Even the chapter titles encourage calm: Chapter One - "On a Hot Day We Drink Tea" or Chapter Four - "I Shall Simply Look Up in the Sky".

This is the thirteenth book starring Mma Ramotswe. I trust that it will not bring bad luck.