47 pages • 1 hour read
Alexander McCall SmithThe No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Alexander McCall SmithFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “What You Need to Open a Detective Agency”
Mma Ramotswe expected opening a business to be difficult. When the lawyer who had organized the sale of her father’s cattle gave her the profits, he tried to warn her that no one would want a lady detective. Mma Ramotswe countered that women notice more than men, and pointed out that the lawyer’s fly was unzipped. She used the profits from the sale to buy herself a house on Zebra Lane and an office at the foot of Kgale Hill, which she worked hard to renovate. Finally, she hired a secretary named Mma Makutsi. The Agency opened on a Monday, and by noon they had their first client: Mma Makutsi herself.
Mma Malatsi’s husband Peter disappeared on Sunday; she thought he had gone to church, but he never reappeared. Mma Ramotswe agrees to take the case, and soon learns that Peter Malatsi had been drowned during a baptism ceremony at a large river. She brings a neighbor’s dog to the river and waits until a large crocodile approaches, then shoots it. Digging through its stomach, she finds rings and wristwatch, which she brings back to Mma Malatsi. Mma Malatsi confirms that the jewelry belonged to her husband, and expresses relief that he was with God, and not another woman.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Boy”
The narrative shifts to follow a unnamed 11-year-old boy. The boy is curious about nature, collecting rocks and animal bones and skins. Because of his curious nature, his parents were used to him wandering far from home, and didn’t typically worry when they couldn’t immediately find him. One day, while walking home, the boy sees the lights of a large truck approaching behind him. The men driving the truck greet him, and warn that he might fall prey to a leopard. The boy accepts their offer to drive him home. As they approach his father’s home, the men tell the boy that, while they won’t hurt him, they’re also not going to let him go. The older of the two men starts to tell the boy a story: Two boys were responsible for caring for a herd of their uncle’s cow, but got distracted when one of the cows began to sing to them. They ignored the rest of the herd, allowing them to escape. When the uncle learned what happened, he killed the singing cow, which was revealed to be the uncle’s dead brother. As the story ends, the boy realizes that he’s being kidnapped, and fights back, although he does not escape.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Mma Makutsi Deals with the Mail”
Mma Ramotswe reviews a manual she ordered on private detection and is gratified to discover that she made no mistakes on her first case. She wonders if she can justify her secretary’s salary, then decides that an agency needs a secretary. On the second week after opening, the agency receives a letter from the father of Thobiso, the young boy kidnapped in the previous chapter. He explains that he is a teacher, and that he and his wife have searched the caves and wild places near their home for signs of their son. Although he cannot pay for Mma Ramotswe’s services, he asks her to ask people in her investigations if they have heard of Thobiso. Mma Ramotswe reluctantly decides that she cannot help the man to find his son, but is disturbed his story, and thinks about Thobiso for the rest of the day.
That evening, Mma Ramotswe thinks about her previous cases, and wonders why Mma Malatsi had not been distraught when she saw evidence of her husband’s death. She wonders if Malatsi had planned or prayed for her husband’s death, and speculates about what the famous English mystery author Agatha Christie would think of the Malatsi case.
Chapter 8 Summary: “A Conversation with Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni”
By the end of its first month, the agency is losing money: Mma Ramotswe’s clients have only paid 550 pula, and she owes her secretary 580 pula. Ramotswe visits her friend Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, the owner of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, to discuss her business’s finances. Handsome, tall, and successful, Rra Matekoni has never been married; Mma Ramotswe wonders what he thinks about when he sits alone outside his shop. Rra Matekoni encourages her to get more, and more lucrative, clients. Mma Ramotswe tells Rra Matekoni about the letter she received from Thobiso’s father. Rra Matekoni replies that he remembers reading about the case, and says that it is hopeless, as the boy must be dead. He tells Mma Ramotswe that he believes the boy was taken and killed for witchcraft, and she feels instinctively that he is right: The boy was taken in order to make a strengthening potion for a rich man. Rra Matekoni calls witchcraft the thing Africans are most ashamed of and which has no place in modern Botswana.
That night, Mma Ramotswe wakes in terror to find that the electricity in her house has gone out. When she walks outside, she hears someone whisper her name. She runs back into the house, locking the door. As soon as she does, the electricity comes back on.
Chapter 9 Summary: “The Boyfriend”
Mma Ramotswe is approached by Paliwalar Patel, one of the richest men in town. Mr. Patel worries that his daughter, Nandira, has a boyfriend at school, and wants Mma Ramotswe to investigate. Mma Ramotswe agrees, thinking privately that Patel should let his daughter be free. She remembers burying her own baby, who was born prematurely. Mma Ramotswe’s first day tailing Nandira is unsuccessful, but Mr. Patel calls and shares an important clue discovered by his wife: a note from a boy called Jack. On the second day, Mma Ramotswe follows Nandira into a local mall, but gets distracted reading a book about snakes and loses track of them again. Mma Ramotswe asks a local street vendor if she has seen the girls. The vendor says they went to the cinema and then left; Mma Ramotswe deduces that they bought tickets for an evening show, and does the same.
That evening, she sits in the back of the theater and waits for Nandira and Jack to appear. However, when Nandira appears, she is alone, and approaches Mma Ramotswe directly to ask why she is following her. Mma Ramotswe explains her father’s concerns. Nandira admits that she made up a boyfriend so that her family would think she had romantic options and wouldn’t automatically choose a partner for her. The next day, Mma Ramotswe explains the situation to Mr. Patel, and urges him to let his daughter have some freedom. He agrees. One year later, Mma Ramotswe runs into Nandira at the President Hotel. Nandira introduces Mma Ramotswe to her friend, a young man named Jack.
Chapter 10 Summary: “Mma Ramotswe Thinks About the Land While Driving Her Tiny White Van to Francistown”
In the hours before dawn, Mma Ramotswe drives north in the agency’s white van. A man leaps out from the bushes on the side of the road and signals for her to stop, but she avoids him and keeps driving, cautious about the type of person who would be out so early. The sun rises and she observes various species of birds in trees. Besides a few cattle, the land is barren. To the west is the Kalahari, the vast desert that covers most of Botswana. She considers how it is the fate of the Batswana to live with this desert, and to husband resources appropriately. She thinks of a trip she took into the Kalahari as a girl, just after the rainy season, when things were in bloom. The wildness of the desert made her think that there was enough space in Africa for everyone. She longs to return to the desert.
Chapters 5-10 Analysis
Wild animals appear as a motif throughout this part of the novel, locating the lived experience of Botswana’s people in the natural environment. It also creates a sense of jeopardy and suspense appropriate to a mystery novel and highlights the importance of treating nature with respect. In this section of the novel, the depictions of predatory species such as alligators and large snakes highlights the importance of local knowledge in wild spaces. Mma Ramotswe has this knowledge, having grown up outside the city and, as is revealed in Chapter 10, spending time in the desert as a girl. After learning that Mma Malatsi’s husband drowned in the Notwane River, Mma Ramotswe waits beside the river to scout for the crocodile who may have eaten his body. When she shoots the alligator, she feels a pang of guilt, despite the fact that “they were bad luck, these creatures” (71). Although she is glad to have closure on the case, she knows that crocodiles “were not meant to be in the Notwane River; it must have wandered for miles overland, or swum up in the flood waters from the Limpopo itself” (71). This passage demonstrates Mma Ramotswe’s intimate knowledge not only of crocodile behavior, but also of the patterns of local animals and landscapes. The story of the “poor crocodile” (71) demonstrates the value of trusting instinct and intuition: The knowledge that Mma Ramotswe learned as a child in guides her in her urban career as a private detective as an adult.
Chapter 6 explores the value of local, immersive knowledge when the unnamed boy is out by himself tracking a snake by following its droppings: “[H]e knew what it was because it had balls of fur in it, and that would only come from a snake. It was rock rabbit fur, he was sure, because of its color and because he knew that rock rabbits were a delicacy to a big snake” (75). This passage highlights the boy’s intimate knowledge of local animals. He recognizes not only the droppings, but the fur within the droppings, and knows that the snakes prey on that specific species of rabbit. The boy’s curiosity is one of his defining characteristics, and “his parents were used to his being out of their sight for hours on end” (74) while exploring nature. This story implies that the wilds of Botswana are considered a kind of proving ground, where young people explore without parental supervision to develop an understanding of their environment and place in it. The boy’s kidnapping shows that it is not always a safe space, although the danger is presented by humans, not animals. The boy’s personal experiences with the snake are contrasted by the clinical nature of the book about snakes Mma Ramotswe reads while staking out Nandira Patel. McCall Smith quotes extensively from the dry description, which begins, “The above picture is of an adult male black mamba, measuring 1.87 meters” (112-13). This dry, clinical description offers useful information, but is less relevant than the local skill and knowledge demonstrated by the young boy.
These chapters also demonstrate the novel’s thematic interest in Perceptions of Religion and Belief. Two cases highlight this tension. Mma Malatsi insists that her missing husband could not have run away with another woman because he recently “became a Christian and took up with some Church” (65-66). Mma Ramotswe is immediately suspicious of religion: on learning that the husband converted, she wonders whether he “got religion badly? [Did a] Lady preacher [lure] him away?” (66). These ambivalent attitudes suggest a skepticism about Christianity that may be reflective of its past role in colonization, the hypocrisy that Mma Ramotswe identifies in some of its adherents, or the ways in which Christianity can intersect with female identity and freedom.
Traditional beliefs and practices also come to the fore in this part of the novel. When Matekoni suggests that the young boy has been kidnapped in order to commit muti or medicine murder, Ramotswe is shocked to hear him mention witchcraft. Although the novel does not yet confirm that this is what has happened, the description of the kidnappers and the sinister mysticism of the story they tell the boy plays into this suggestion. The novel says that witchcraft and medical murder in Botswana are “the one subject which would bring fear to the most resolute heart. This was the great taboo” (90). Matekoni calls this kind of witchcraft “the thing we Africans are most ashamed of” (90) and out of place in a modern nation. These comments can be read as McCall Smith making some attempt to situate the muti subplot in its proper social context and to avoid pejorative generalized depictions of African culture and traditional practices. The introduction of muti as a key strand of the novel risks misrepresenting Botswana in 1998, so having the main characters distance themselves from the illegal practice helps the novel to show that it happens extremely rarely, if at all, and is condemned in Botswana’s society.
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