| |  | Author: Alexander Mccall Smith
Publisher: Center Point Large Print
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  106 reviews
Sales Rank: 726085
Format: Large Print
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.9 x 0.8
ISBN: 1585473294
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9781585473298
ASIN: 1585473294
Publication Date: August 2003
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| Customer Reviews:
 An utter joy to read, polite and gentle humour April 30, 2006
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is the audio cassette edition of the second book in the Precious Ramotswe series - quite nice reading, the books are better, but great listening in the car!
I can't believe it has taken me so long to discover the Precious Ramotswe stories - of the Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency - they are gorgeous. Precious like their owner, gently funny, beautifully polite and full of lovely moments.
Precious is engaged to Rra J B L Matkekoni, owner of the Speedy car repair service and himself a gentle man. I love the intertwiing of the stories in this. There is the problem of the American woman who lost her son 10 years ago. She knows he is not alive anymore, she simply wants to know what has happened. Then there is the problem of the local butcher who wants to know if his wife is cheating on him with another man. Unknown to Precious she has caused another problem, that of Ra J B L Matekoni's maid. She resents Precious coming into his life and now making her life very difficult. A fiance for Ra J B L Matekoni will spell the end for her life of relaxation. She will have to clean the house, she will not be able to entertain male friends. There are complications she does not wish to deal with. She wants Precious to go away and is prepared to do something about it.
These stories are very much about character development and plot. The problems which Precious has been hired for are generally small and not life threatening. The language is beautifully formal in the style you can imagine they speak, and the overall impression is of intimacy - these are concerns which I can relate to they aren't murder and international spy rings. They are small concerns involved mostly in every day life.
There are some classic touches in this - the resolution of the butchers problem is classically beautiful, as in the undercover observation of the straying woman.
This is beautifully written, it absolutely sings. I have fallen in love! Totally in love with this series!
An utter joy to read, polite and gentle humour April 29, 2006
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
I can't believe it has taken me so long to discover the Precious Ramotswe stories - of the Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency - they are gorgeous. Precious like their owner, gently funny, beautifully polite and full of lovely moments.
Precious is engaged to Ra J B L Matkekoni, owner of the Speedy car repair service and himself a gentle man. I love the intertwiing of the stories in this. There is the problem of the American woman who lost her son 10 years ago. She knows he is not alive anymore, she simply wants to know what has happened. Then there is the problem of the local butcher who wants to know if his wife is cheating on him with another man. Unknown to Precious she has caused another problem, that of Ra J B L Matekoni's maid. She resents Precious coming into his life and now making her life very difficult. A fiance for Ra J B L Matekoni will spell the end for her life of relaxation. She will have to clean the house, she will not be able to entertain male friends. There are complications she does not wish to deal with. She wants Precious to go away and is prepared to do something about it.
These stories are very much about character development and plot. The problems which Precious has been hired for are generally small and not life threatening. The language is beautifully formal in the style you can imagine they speak, and the overall impression is of intimacy - these are concerns which I can relate to they aren't murder and international spy rings. They are small concerns involved mostly in every day life.
There are some classic touches in this - the resolution of the butchers problem is classically beautiful, as in the undercover observation of the straying woman.
This is beautifully written, it absolutely sings. I have fallen in love! Totally in love with this series!
Rra Maketoni Meets an Orphan Girl April 6, 2006
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Tears of the Giraffe (2002) is the second volume in this series, following The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. In the previous volume, Precious Ramotswe exposes an unfaithful husband, a con artist and a fraudulent doctor, returns a lost child, and agrees to marry Mr. J.L.B. Maketoni.
In this novel, Precious inspects the house of Mr. J.L.B. Maketoni and declares it unsuitable for their domicile; they agree to live in the house on Zebra road. However, he is not to store automobile engines and parts within the house.
Since Mr. J.L.B. Maketoni will no longer live in his present house after the wedding, he notifies his maid that her job will be terminated at that time. The maid, Florence Peko, is not very good at her job, but she has conditioned Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni to accept what is offered and does not really want to lose the position. Jobs are scarce and hard to come by. If it wasn't for that Ramotswe woman, she would keep her job. Florence wonders how she can get rid of the odious woman.
Mr. J.L.B. Maketoni has helped the Orphans Home with mechanical repairs for years. When Mma Potokwane calls for his assistance with an overheating water pump, he drives out to fix it. While he is working on the pump engine, one of the orphans, a young girl in a squeaking wheel chair, brings him some water and stays to watch him finish the repairs. Afterwards, he oils the bearings and frees a sticking brake lock on her chair.
Mma Ramotswe acquires an American client who is searching for her lost son. The client had come to Botswana over a decade ago with her husband and eighteen year old son. Her son had found interesting work on a farm commune and stayed behind when his parents left. A couple of years later, the son disappeared one evening and was never seen again.
Highly recommended for McCall Smith fans and anyone else who enjoys detective stories set in foreign locales.
-Bill Jordin
 Cute, comfortable, enjoyable read March 28, 2006
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is the kind of book one reads on an airplane. It's about 240 pages and there's nothing taxing about the plot. There's nothing sad to bring you down. Perhaps there's a joyful reunion to lift your spirits.
At the same time one is taught the subtle or profound differences between Botswana and the USA, as well as countries closer to Botswana.
Ms. Ramotswe is thoughtful, smart, full of common sense, and an unforgetable character of modern-day fiction. Apart from other detectives who are always unerringly never outsmarted, she is sometimes fooled by an adversary or the subject of her investigations...a purely common happenstance in real life, and she is all the more likeable for it.
This is my second read of this series and I will probably read them all as long as the situation is right: a lazy summer afternoon on the porch swing, the aforementioned plane ride, or perhaps during an ill day from work.
 Politically correct tear-jerker; no mysteries. February 9, 2006
6 out of 15 found this review helpful
Yes, there is a nice description of Botswana (nice thoughtful softhearted people all, beautiful land; AIDS? What AIDS?). Even that becomes a bit tedious at times. After first seven-eight times even I did get the idea that a proper Botswana's way to shake hands and to accept gifts is with two hands. It did not have to be repeated twenty three more times. Yet it was the best part of the book. Mystery solving? Well, it goes like that: Mma Ramotswe goes to the place of the crime, and "knows" how it all happened. Needless to say, she is correct. There goes deductive logic, Watson. And for a coup de grace the subplot: Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni (I think probably about twenty pages of this short book were filled by endless repetition of "Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni"; no short names in Botswana? Can we call him Bob?) adapts two poor little orphans, older sister and younger brother. Of course the orphans live in orphanage, and have everything they need, because this is Botswana's way (after all, we are not like Nigeria......), but still no parents. Touching. Not touching enough. Little girl is paraplegic. Still not touching enough. Turns out when little children's tribal mother died in the jungle, the newborn brother was buried with the dead mother, because it is the jungle's way, therefore it is correct, and who are we to judge. Apparently, the jungle way is also to bury the kid alive, rather than to finish him/her off first, and it must contain the wisdom of the millennia. Indeed, it turned to be quite fortunate in this particular case: the little girl (not a paraplegic yet), waits, digs out the brother, takes him to town, and cares for him for four years on the streets. I wonder, why the great tribal elders buried the kid rather than to take him to town, but never mind, may be it was a long walk, and it was raining, and no FedEx drop off box nearby. Then little girl becomes paraplegic, and is picked up by the great orphanage where she and the brother lack nothing. Anybody crying yet? Before accusing me of being so very insensitive, please realize that none of that actually happened. It is fiction, and as such I find this to be quite a bit overdone. And now, for a final politically correct vignette, Bob (Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni) is a car mechanic, and (being childless) has a dream that the little former orphan brother will inherit his garage. Noops, not touching enough. It is the little paraplegic girl who is interested and has a talent to become a car mechanic, and who are we to object to that? I bet that eventually she will succeed (but maybe after she becomes a quadriplegic and blind in some subsequent book to make it more touching?). I will never know. I was also told that the series gets better. I will never know myself, either........
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