Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | SCD FICTION MCC 8 DISCS | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
The Miracle at Speedy Motors
Author Notes
Alexander McCall Smith was born on August 24, 1948 in Zimbabwe. He was a professor of medical law at the University of Edinburgh, but he left in 2005 to focus on his writing. He has written over 60 books, including specialist academic titles including Forensic Aspects of Sleep and The Criminal Law of Botswana, short story collections including Portuguese Irregular Verbs, and children's books including The Perfect Hamburger. He is best known for the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. He also writes the Corduroy Mansions, Isabel Dalhousie and 44 Scotland Street series.
He has received numerous awards, including The Crime Writers' Association Dagger in the Library Award and the 2004 United Kingdom's Author of the Year Award. His book, The Full Cupboard of Life, received the Saga Award for Wit in the United Kingdom. In 2007, he received a CBE for his services in literature.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Lisette Lecat is the ideal reader for Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. A native of South Africa (which borders Botswana and shares Setswana language roots), Lecat's perfect accents and delightful characterizations are charming and entirely believable. Smith's detective plots are always secondary to the common sense and often witty psychological and philosophical discussions and internal musings that constitute the better part of the book, but Lecat manages to keep listeners engaged and focused throughout, and to feel comfortable in the Botswanan landscape. Teaching law at Botswana University, Smith obviously developed great admiration and love for the nation and its people, and it is this that makes his detective ladies so popular. Lecat's reading will delight both veteran and new fans of the series. Simultaneous release with the Pantheon hardcover (Reviews, Feb. 25). (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The ninth installment in McCall Smith's beloved No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series finds Botswanan Precious Ramotswe musing upon more mysteries of life. There's the woman desperately searching for her family, with not a clue where to start. She claims that her late mother is not her birth mother, but Mma Ramotswe isn't so sure. Associate detective Grace Makutsi (whom readers will remember for her large spectacles and stellar 97 percent score on the Botswana Secretarial College exam) is restless over damage to a new bed purchased by her fiancé, Phuti Radiphuti. (She and the well-mannered Mr. Radiphuti had been unable to resist that heart-shaped velvet headboard.) Mma Ramotswe also receives some threatening letters, which seem to have come from a most unlikely source. Finally, Mma Ramotswe's husband, talented car mechanic and model citizen Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, meets a doctor who just may have a cure for adopted daughter Motholeli's spinal condition. (Other experts have told the young girl she'd be wheelchair-bound for life.) While hope springs eternal, Mma Ramotswe doesn't share the unabashed optimism of her spouse. Scotsman McCall Smith, who also pens the Isabel Dalhousie, 44 Scotland Street, and Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, conveys his deep admiration for Botswana (where he once lived and helped establish a school of law at the university) on every page of this warm, wise, whimsical novel.--Block, Allison Copyright 2008 Booklist
Library Journal Review
This ninth "No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" novel is one of the strongest entries in a consistently strong series. Like its predecessors, it is a gentle, warmhearted mix of loosely interwoven narrative threads that reaffirm Botswana detective Precious Ramotswe's philosophy of serving others. The book also offers enough intrigue, mystery, and uncertainty to keep listeners guessing--particularly about what the title's "miracle" will be. The answer is at once surprising and wholly believable. As always, South African reader Lisette Lecat brings a perfect accent and intonation to her narration, making Smith's books a treat to hear. With a new BBC miniseries adapted from the novels coming to HBO, American interest in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency should soon be greater than ever. Strongly recommended for general collections.--Kent Rasmussen, Thousand Oaks, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
We Are All Care of One Another The correct address of Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's foremost solver of problems--in the sense that this was where she could be found between eight in the morning and five in the afternoon, except when she was not there--was The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, c/o Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, Gaborone, Botswana. The "care of" was a matter of some disagreement between Mma Ramotswe and Grace Makutsi, her assistant and "right-hand lady," as she put it. Mma Makutsi, with all the dignity of one who had received ninety-seven per cent in the final examinations of the Botswana Secretarial College, took the view that to say that the agency was care of Speedy Motors was to diminish its importance, even if it was true that the agency occupied a small office at the side of the garage. Those who really counted in this life, she maintained, were usually not care of anybody. "We are the ones they come looking for," she argued, with perhaps less than perfect logic. "When people come to this place, Mma, they look for us, not for the garage. The garage customers all know where the garage is. So our name should be first in the address, not the other way round, Mma. If anything, Speedy Motors should be care of us." She looked at Mma Ramotswe as she said this, and then quickly added: "That is not to say that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and his garage are not important, Mma. That is not to say such a thing. It is just a question of . . ." Mma Ramotswe waited for her assistant to complete the sentence, but nothing further came. That was the trouble with Mma Makutsi, she thought; she left things hanging in the air, often the most important things. What was it a question of? It must be a question of status, she decided; Mma Makutsi could be very prickly about that. There had been that business about her being described as "senior secretary" when she had only been in the job for a couple of months and when there was nobody junior to her in the firm; in fact, when there was nobody else at all in the firm. Then, once she had been promoted to assistant detective, it had not been long before she had asked when she could expect to be an "associate detective." That promotion had come, as had her earlier advancement, at a time when Mma Ramotswe had been feeling guilty about something or other and had felt the need to smooth ruffled feathers. But now that she was an associate detective it was difficult to see what the next step could be. She had a suspicion that Mma Makutsi hankered after the title of "chief detective"--a suspicion which was founded on Mma Ramotswe's having found in the waste-paper basket a crumpled piece of paper on which Mma Makutsi had been trying out new signatures. Not only were there several attempts at Mma Grace Radiphuti , Radiphuti being the surname of her fiancé, Phuti, but there was also a scrawled signature, Grace Makutsi , under which she had written Chief Detective . Mma Ramotswe had re-crumpled the paper and tossed it back into the basket. She felt bad about having read it in the first place; one should not look uninvited at the papers of another, even if they have been discarded. And it was entirely understandable, normal even, that an engaged woman should practise the signature she will use after her marriage. Indeed, Mma Ramotswe suspected that most women secretly experimented with a new signature shortly after meeting a man they looked upon with favour--even if that man had not expressed any interest in them. A handsome and eligible man might expect to have his name tried out in this way by many women who fancied themselves on his arm, and there was no harm in this, she thought, unless one believed that women should not prepare quite so willingly for their hearts to be broken. Women, thought Mma Excerpted from The Miracle at Speedy Motors by Alexander McCall Smith All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
