Tears of the Giraffe: A No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Novel (2)

The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency introduced the world to the one and only Precious Ramotswe — the engaging and sassy owner of Botswana´s only detective agency.

Tears of the Giraffe takes us further into the life of the engaging and sassy Precious Ramotswe, the owner and detective of Botswana's only Ladies' Detective Agency. Among her cases are wayward wives, unscrupulous maids, and a challenge to resolve a mother's pain for her son, who is long lost on the African plains. Mma Ramotswe's own impending marriage to that most gentlemanly of men, Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, the promotion of her secretary to the dizzy heights of Assistant Detective, and new additions to the Matekoni family, all brew up the most humorous and charmingly entertaining of tales.

"Cynics might not buy McCall Smith's fulsome praise of old African ways and the 'traditionally built' Precious Ramotswe, but this is the most entertaining read of the year." The Guardian (London)

The continuing story of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency finds our wily heroine searching for a young man who disappeared into the African plains many years ago. Along the way she becomes engaged to Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, a good man who passes the most difficult test (her father would like him), and promotes her talented secretary, who got 97 percent on her typing final, to Assistant Detective. She also finds herself suddenly and unexpectedly the mother of two small children. Tears of the Giraffe is the wonderfully entertaining continuation of the story of Botswana's first lady detective.

The continuing story of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency — starring Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's first lady detective — finds our wily heroine searching for a young man who disappeared into the African plains many years ago.

Alexander McCall Smith is a professor of medical law at Edinburgh University. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe and taught law at the University of Botswana. He is the

The story of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency continues as irrepressible sleuth Precious Ramotswe searches for a young man who vanished many years ago on the African plains, while dealing with her engagement to Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni, sudden and unexpected motherhood, and her recently promoted new assistant. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

CHAPTER ONE

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's House

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, proprietor of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, found it difficult to believe that Mma Ramotswe, the accomplished founder of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, had agreed to marry him. It was at the second time of asking; the first posing of the question, which had required immense courage on his part, had brought forth a refusal--gentle, and regretful--but a refusal nonetheless. After that, he had assumed that Mma Ramotswe would never remarry; that her brief and disastrous marriage to Note Mokoti, trumpeter and jazz aficionado, had persuaded her that marriage was nothing but a recipe for sorrow and suffering. After all, she was an independent-minded woman, with a business to run, and a comfortable house of her own in Zebra Drive. Why, he wondered, should a woman like that take on a man, when a man could prove to be difficult to manage once vows were exchanged and he had settled himself in her house? No, if he were in Mma Ramotswe's shoes, then he might well decline an offer of marriage, even from somebody as eminently reasonable and respectable as himself.

But then, on that noumenal evening, sitting with him on her verandah after he had spent the afternoon fixing her tiny white van, she had said yes. And she had given this answer in such a simple, unambiguously kind way, that he had been confirmed in his belief that she was one of the very best women in Botswana. That evening, when he returned home to his house near the old Defence Force Club, he had reflected on the enormity of his good fortune. Here he was, in his mid-forties, a man who had until that point been unable to find a suitable wife, now blessed with the hand of the one woman whom he admired more than any other. Such remarkable good fortune was almost inconceivable, and he wondered whether he would suddenly wake up from the delicious dream into which he seemed to have wandered.

Yet it was true. The next morning, when he turned on his bedside radio to hear the familiar sound of cattle bells with which Radio Botswana prefaced its morning broadcast, he realised that it had indeed happened and that unless she had changed her mind overnight, he was a man engaged to be married.

He looked at his watch. It was six o'clock, and the first light of the day was on the thorn tree outside his bedroom window. Smoke from morning fires, the fine wood smoke that sharpened the appetite, would soon be in the air, and he would hear the sound of people on the paths that criss-crossed the bush near his house; shouts of children on their way to school; men going sleepy-eyed to their work in the town; women calling out to one another; Africa waking up and starting the day. People arose early, but it would be best to wait an hour or so before he telephoned Mma Ramotswe, which would give her time to get up and make her morning cup of bush tea. Once she had done that, he knew that she liked to sit outside for half an hour or so and watch the birds on her patch of grass. There were hoopoes, with their black and white stripes, pecking at insects like little mechanical toys, and the strutting ring-neck doves, engaged in their constant wooing. Mma Ramotswe liked birds, and perhaps, if she were interested, he could build her an aviary. They could breed doves, maybe, or even, as some people did, something bigger, such as buzzards, though what they would do with buzzards once they had bred them was not c

Alexander McCall Smith is the author of over forty books. His collection of African stories, Children of Wax, received critical acclaim and has been the subject of an award-winning film.