Alexander McCall Smith’s Botswana may share a name with a small South African nation, but it’s a country of the mind as much as a real place. His The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels create their own reality, and Precious Ramotswe, his amiable heroine, inhabits a self-contained fictional world that has enchanted millions of readers since the first book was published in 1999. Plots don’t matter much in this world (McCall Smith seems to have borrowed a large part of his latest — involving three successive deaths in the same hospital bed at precisely the same time of day — from one of the internet websites dedicated to recording urban legends). The gentle interplay between the characters is what holds the attention.

In The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, the eighth in the series, this threatens to become predictable. Regular readers know what to expect. Mma Ramotswe, the “traditionally built” owner of The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, will sip her bush tea and apply her sturdy commonsense to the problems her clients bring her. Her husband, Mr JLB Maketoni, mechanic and garage owner, will have his name carefully spelt out every time he is mentioned, and will demonstrate almost superhuman levels of kindness, tolerance and patience. Mma Makutsi, the assistant detective, will remind people that she scored 97% in her exams at the Botswana Secretarial College, and will find her dignity affronted at least once in the novel by Charlie, Mr JLB Maketoni’s bumptious apprentice. Predictability in novels written as a series has its own appeal, though, and may do much to explain the continuing success of the Mma Ramotswe books.

THE GOOD HUSBAND OF ZEBRA DRIVE by Alexander McCall Smith

Polygon £12.99

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