Mma Ramotswe is a detective cast from an unusual mold, but one I recognized immediately.  She is one of those women I knew in my childhood, connected to the heartbeat of a place through a wide network of family and friends,  understanding of the virtues and foibles of individuals, optimistic but never naive, full of sympathy for foolishness but stern in her judgment of misdeeds.  There is a huge sense of dignity about her -- it would never occur to you to be familiar or disrespectful, on pain of being struck down by a goddess that does not tolerate any rannygazoo. Her cases are of the cozy kind, and truly, they are often only a vehicle for Mma Ramotswe's observations of the life around her.  And what a life! There's her assistant, Mma Makutsi, she of the 97% passing grade in secretarial college, and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, Mma Ramotswe's husband, always referred to by his full name even by his wife, and the young layabouts he employs in his business, Speedy Motors. There are the clients passing through the doors of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and the people Mma Ramotswe encounters as she goes about her investigations. The richness of the characterizations is remarkable: even the smallest walk-on is a full person on his own right.

And there is always Botswana.  The country is a character in its own right, poor but proud, beautiful, dry but bursting with life at the first sign of rains.  Mr. Smith makes you see, smell, and hear Botswana, makes you want to see the sky, and the thirsty soil, and the vegetable gardens under their shade netting. I moved Botswana to the "sooner rather than later" visiting list as I read these books.  It turns out Mr. Smith is one of those Scotsmen who are born far away from home -- in Zimbabwe in his case -- and go back to Scotland at the end of a fruitful professional life (and one of the joys of my life was to find out that he was a law professor with a specialization in bioethics!), but who keep the place of his birth close to the heart, always.

Besides, how can you not love books that end with an incantation? The simple repeating of Africa, Africa, Africa, Africa, seems both a call and a memory, a summoning and a cry. And, as with all incantations, it can pull at your heart until you start looking for maps and travel guides and pricing plane tickets.  In Mr. Smith's books, Africa's calling us all home.