Cover image of "The Great Hippopotamus Hotel," a novel about daily life in botswana

Right from the beginning, the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency had been about helping people with the problems in their lives.” And there’s no more succinct statement of the agency’s mission statement. Mma Precious Ramotswe, the founder, and Mma Grace Makutsi, her would-be partner, poke into other people’s’ lives all the time. They investigate. But crime has practically nothing to do with their practice. If you’re looking for a slam-bang, propulsive plot dragging you by the lapels to a climactic ending, you won’t find it in any of the 25 novels of this series. But these books offer many other rewards. They’re charming to a fault. They are often funny, even hilarious. The character development is wonderful to behold. And they provide a window into daily life in Botswana, one of the most remarkable emerging nations on the African continent. In short, these little novels are a great reading experience.

A travel adventure, gentle humor, and an abundance of charm

Each book in this series, including the latest, The Great Hippopotamus Hotel, typically features one of the people problems the ladies are asked to solve. That’s true in the title here, as is often the case. But in no book does author Alexander McCall Smith fasten on a single investigation and follow it from beginning to end. In each, multiple clients appear, the two ladies sometimes work apart from each other, and all along the way they and the men in the auto repair shop next door engage in sometimes lengthy and convoluted discussions about . . . well, just about anything that might come to mind. It’s these conversations that provide most of the charm, and nearly all the humor, in the series. You’ll see, if you read even one of these books.

The Great Hippopotamus Hotel (#1 Ladies Detective Agency #25) by Alexander McCall Smith (2024) 237 pages ★★★★★

Photo of the stars of the TV production of the series of these novels about daily life in Botswana
Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi as portrayed by Jill Scott and Anika Noni Rose in the 2008-09 television production of the series. Image: Rotten Tomatoes

About those mysteries

Here are the two principal “mysteries” confronting the ladies of the agency in The Great Hippopotamus Hotel:

  • Somebody is attempting to destroy the great reputation of the hotel with dirty tricks. For example, leaving a lethal snake in a guest room, and poisoning the food. Who’s doing this? Mma Makutsi intends to find out. Mma Makutsi’s nemesis, the glamorous and ruthless Violet Sephotho, has cropped up agIn on her radar screen. That’s the case in almost in every book. Violet was a classmate of hers at the Botswana Secretarial College. There, Violet squeaked by with a minimal passing grade after doing her nails and chatting with her friends in every class. Mma Makutsi, though, graduated with a then-record of 97 percent on the final exam. (Which she talks about all the time). Now it appears that Violet has gotten her hooks into one of the new owners of the Great Hippopotamus Hotel and—Mma Makutsi is sure of it—may be behind the sabotage there.
  • Mr. J L. B. Matekoni faces a dilemma. A very important client has asked him to perform a service he feels is unethical: he proposes to buy an Italian (read: Japanese) sports car and keep it secret from his wife, so he can cruise around the city of Gaborone and pick up women. Mr. J L. B. Matekoni—he’s never referred to in any other way—is Mma Ramotswe’s husband and proprietor of the Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors next door to the detective agency, where he nurses recalcitrant cars back to life with the sometimes dubious assistance of his apprentices, Charlie and Fanwell.

And there’s a lot of fun along the way as these two cases gradually unfold, with surprises along the way.

About Botswana

Here’s the author’s take on this remarkable country: “Botswana was a prosperous country by African standards. Since independence, since that windy night all those years ago when the Bechuanaland Protectorate had come to the end of its days and the new state had come into existence, people had built up their country, brick by brick, mile by mile of newly laid road, pula by pula of money put back into the bank, carefully husbanding the resources of this vast, empty land until the foundations had become a building of which they all could be so proud.”

Fueled by income from the export of diamonds, and devoid of the endemic, high-level corruption that plagues much of the continent, the country has steadily improved social services for the country’s three million people and built infrastructure that have, in turn, propelled its economy forward. It’s an African marvel and a lovely setting for Alexander McCall Smith’s heart-warming novels.

About the author

Photo of Alexander McCall Smith, author of these novels about daily life in botswana
Alexander McCall Smith. Image: Graham Clark – British Council Literature

Sir Alexander (“Sandy“) McCall Smith is a Scottish legal scholar and author of more than 100 novels and numerous other works of fiction as well as 13 academic texts. He has sold more than 40 million books. McCall Smith was born in Southern Rhodesia (today’s Zimbabwe in 1948 to British parents. He was educated there, moving to Scotland to earn both an LLB and PhD degrees at the University of Edinburgh. He and his wife lived there for more than 30 years, raising two daughters there. McCall Smith lived for many years in Botswana, teaching law at the University of Botswana.

I’ve reviewed eight of the previous novels in this series, beginning with number 12, The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party (Lessons in life from the #1 Ladies’ Detectives) and number 13, The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection (An exceptional tale of Botswana’s #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency). Oh, and I read all the previous books in the series before I began writing these reviews.

You might also enjoy my posts: 

And you can always find my most popular reviews, and the most recent ones, on the Home Page.