The Colors of All the Cattle

Starred review from September 24, 2018
Mwa Ramotswe considers entering politics in Smith’s excellent 19th No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novel (after 2017’s The House of Unexpected Sisters). She’s not at all sure she’s qualified, but her friend Mwa Potokwame, who heads the local orphan farm, persuades her it’s her duty to run for a seat on the Gaborone City Council, especially since her opponent is Violet Sephotho. The mercenary Violet, the nemesis of Grace Makutsi, Mwa Ramotswe’s prickly partner in the detective agency, is sure to support the controversial proposal for the construction of a splashy hotel next to a cemetery. Meanwhile, agency assistant Charlie takes the lead in investigating a hit-and-run case in the town of Mochudi. A serious romance between Charlie and a young woman he’s dating shows his growing maturity. Amusingly revealing of Mwa Ramotswe’s character are the relentlessly honest answers she gives to a reporter who interviews her before the election. Smith continues to bring joy to his readers through his insights into the human heart. Seven-city author tour. Agent: Robin Straus, Robin Straus Agency.

October 1, 2018
Precious Ramotswe runs for public office.It's not as if there's not already enough happening at the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency to claim Mma Ramotswe's full attention. Dr. Marang, an old family friend from her native village of Mochudi, wants her help in identifying the hit-and-run driver who severely injured him and left him with a raft of medical bills to pay. Charlie, her half-time junior detective, gets his first chance to work as a solo operative when he travels to Mochudi in hopes of identifying the car that struck Dr. Marang. At the same time, Charlie, who spends the other half of his not very full professional life working as an apprentice under the benevolent eye of Mma Ramotswe's husband, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, at Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, is courting Queenie-Queenie, whose position as Senior Sales Consultant at This-Way Fashion House has kept him from noticing how impossibly wealthy her family is. And Mma Grace Makutsi, joint managing director of the Agency, has her first quarrel with her husband, Phuti Radiphuti, who owns the Double Comfort Furniture Store. But none of those complications cost Mma Ramotswe more sleepless nights than the promise that her old friend Mma Sylvia Potokwani, the matron at the orphan farm, has extracted from her to oppose her old nemesis Violet Sephotho in the election for the Gaborone city council, a race that will likely pivot on the plans to build the Big Fun Hotel, which promises to live up to its name, on a parcel of land adjoining the local cemetery.Readers familiar with this venerable series (The House of Unexpected Sisters, 2017, etc.) will know that the race will be run in McCall Smith's own patented tempo. But it bears all the quiet weight they'd expect before reaching a particularly appropriate ending.

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October 15, 2018
For fans of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, there can be no prospect more delightfully chilling than a face-off between Mma Precious Ramotswe, owner of the agency and solver of people's problems, and Violet Sephotho, man-stealer, cheat, schemer par excellence, and longtime rival of Precious' assistant, Mma Makutsi. The occasion is an election for a seat on the Gaborone City Council; at stake is preserving Botswana from big hotel developers who would transform the landscape. High comedy abounds in McCall Smith's depiction of the two very different candidates and campaigns. Besides the campaign, Mma Ramotswe must deal with an almost-impossible-to-solve case of a hit-and-run accident that just about destroyed a local doctor she has known since childhood. New readers may find this latest in the series a bit digressive, with characters' dialogue and thoughts sometimes seeming like filler. Still, the campaign gives the tale needed focus and bite, and McCall Smith slides in intriguing glimpses of a troubled Botswana, including the sobering fact that women who work the mines often must give up their children to the orphanage. A lesser light in a series that still shines very brightly.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)