The Line Up (43 page)

The Mochudi woman who that day was to give us the chicken lived in a small house with a beautifully kept yard. The sweeping of the yard is one of the most important symbolic tasks women in Botswana traditionally perform. A house with a well-swept yard would be a well-run establishment. An unhappy, chaotic house would not have a well-swept yard.

I remember the woman greeting us at her gate. She was wearing a red dress and had the naturally courteous manner one finds so often in that country. Walking about in the yard, blissfully unaware of the fate that awaited it, was a chicken.

After a few niceties had been exchanged, the woman started to pursue the chicken, which ran here and there, squawking in alarm but unable to escape. Once she had caught it, she dispatched it with a flick of the wrist and handed it to Fiona. I remember thinking: What a remarkable woman. And then I thought: I wonder what her history is? And finally I thought: One day perhaps I should write a story about a woman like this who lives in this village.

That was the beginning of the story of Mma Ramotswe.

6

The following year I went to work in Botswana for a period of about eight months, having been allowed to do so by the University of Edinburgh, where I lectured. The University of Botswana had requested that I be seconded to them to set up their law program. I was happy to do this, as I had very much enjoyed my time in Gaborone the previous year and I rather liked the idea of spending more time there. I went out and was allocated a house behind a garage, not far from the Tlokweng Road. The garden was bare, but I was approached by a young man who wanted me to take him on as my gardener. In Botswana, as in other countries in the region, it is very much expected that one will contribute to the local economy by employing staff one does not really need. In Swaziland I had given a job to a young man called Simon who spent most of his time tending to the strawberries that were already growing in the garden. Then he ate most of the strawberries himself. It was a satisfactory arrangement—from his point of view, at least. Now I employed a man called Felix, who unfortunately revealed on the first day he worked for me that he had a very severe cough. I became suspicious and took him up to Mochudi to be seen by Howard, who confirmed that Felix was unfortunately suffering from tuberculosis. Howard admitted him to the hospital and cured him within three months or so. Felix returned to work; in many other countries in Africa, where health budgets are much more pinched, the outcome might have been different. One day Felix came to me and complained that somebody had whipped him very badly. He took off his shirt, and I saw the skin covered with weals. I asked him who had done this, and he replied that it had been the supervisor at a local mission. I drove with Felix to make a complaint to the missionary, who interrogated the supervisor. The supervisor agreed that somebody had whipped Felix, but said that this was because Felix had gone round the mission station biting his enemies. There was not much I could do, but I was reminded of a lesson that I was subsequently to make use of in the Mma Ramotswe books: Informal solutions are very common in African countries, and one has to be careful about interfering if one is an outsider. Mind you, I do not know quite what Mma Ramotswe would have done in this difficult situation. 7 I returned to Scotland. Each year, though, I would go back to Botswana, where I was still involved in a number of projects, including writing a book on the criminal law of the country. I imagined that one day I might write something about Gaborone and the people I had met there, but I did nothing about it. I had other things to work on and was kept fairly busy with them. But in 1996, I sat down one day and wrote a short story about a woman called Precious Ramotswe who uses the inheritance she received from her father to start a little business—a private-detective agency. All the odds are against her, but she succeeds. I wrote the short story in the space of an hour or so. I do not remember the circumstances in which I wrote it; most of us, I suspect, do not know at the time that some apparently insignificant act will change our lives. Perhaps there are some authors who, when they put pen to paper, say to themselves: Now, this is something that is going to change everything for me. I have never done that, even if I occasionally remember where I was and what I was doing when an idea came to me. I do remember, however, where I was when I wrote most of the novel that followed. My wife and I had arranged a house exchange with a couple from a small village outside Montpelier in the south of France. The house we were in had a study on a mezzanine floor, and it was here that I sat as I wrote The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. I wrote in the early morning, and then at lunchtime we would drive off to a picnic place near a river to take the children swimming. I remember finishing the book, but I do not remember thinking that it would be likely to have much of a life beyond an initial small print run. I gave the book to the publishers who had brought out my previous collection of short stories, Heavenly Date. Stephanie Wolfe Murray, who then ran the firm, read the manuscript while she accompanied a truckload of relief supplies to the Balkans. She said that the book would be published, and I waited to hear more. Then the publishing firm ran into difficulties and was bought by somebody else. Stephanie, one of Scotland’s great publishers of the twentieth century, was no longer in charge. I suspect that I was too non-hip for the new owners and so, realizing that my face did not fit, I took the manuscript to another publisher. This firm, Polygon, was then owned by Edinburgh University Press, and the commissioning editor was Marion Sinclair (God bless her). She and Alison Bowden (God bless her too) saw the book through to publication in 1998. I will remain forever in their debt. They printed fifteen hundred copies. At the time of publication I was spending six months as a visiting professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, a private university in a plush part of that remarkable and most unusual city. I was happy there, although I found that Dallas was a city that required a bit of work to get to know. I made friends amongst my new colleagues at SMU and began to study the saxophone under an African American instrument repairer and jazz player who took me to blues clubs in Dallas that I would never have been able to find had it not been for him. Another set of very good friends in Dallas were Joe and Mimi McKnight. Joe, who is a well-known Texas legal historian, was a Rhodes Scholar and is a great devotee of Oxford, where he and Mimi spend part of each summer. Mimi is a bibliophile, an authority on the ways of cats, and sings in the choir of a high Episcopal church in Highland Park. They held a launch party for the book in their house in Dallas. My friends from SMU generously came to this party, but nobody, including me, thought that this book would go anywhere in particular. Who would be interested in reading about the life of a woman in Botswana, a country that relatively few people then knew anything about? 8 The book was published in Scotland and was given a very encouraging review in the Daily Telegraph by Tony Daniels, who is an accomplished essayist and the author of a number of highly entertaining and thought-provoking books. Rather to my surprise, the first print run sold out and additional copies were printed. I wrote a sequel to the first book, and another book after that. After their publication in Scotland, these books were offered to large London paperback publishers but were consistently turned down. My agents pointed to the generous reviews, but this would not sway those publishers. Why? The impression I had was that they wanted edge; they expected violence and dysfunction, especially from a Scottish writer. We were all meant to be gritty and in-your-face. In the United States the books were initially distributed by Columbia University Press. They sold them into a number of independent bookstores, where they slowly started to get a word-of-mouth following. Eventually there were four in the series, and that was the stage at which the series was picked up by large publishers in New York, Anchor Books and Pantheon. Suddenly it became very successful. Foreign editions were sold, and today the books are published in some forty-five languages. Mma Ramotswe had arrived. It was the Americans who discovered Mma Ramotswe. I owe everything to my American readers, who bought the books in large numbers. Like any country, the United States has its faults, but at heart Americans are a kind and generous-spirited people, and the country remains a beacon in the darkness of this world. 9 But who is she, this woman from Botswana who has somehow succeeded in speaking to so many very different people? Her name is Precious Ramotswe, and she is called Mma Ramotswe. Mma is the honorific for a woman and is pronounced mar, with a slight emphasis on the m sound. She is the daughter of the late Obed Ramotswe, a miner who went from Botswana to work in the gold mines in South Africa. Her mother died when she was very young, and Precious was brought up by her father and a female cousin of his. She does not remember her mother, but she remembers her father very well and thinks of him constantly. “Not a day goes past,” she says, “not a day but I think of my late daddy, Obed Ramotswe, miner, citizen of Botswana, and a great judge of cattle.” Obed Ramotswe was a good man. In his daughter’s mind he represents the old Botswana values—those of integrity and concern for others. She remembers his moral example and his love for her. He was proud of his daughter, just as he was proud of his country. People sometimes say to me that I rather overstate the pride people in Botswana feel for their country. I do not think I do. The Batswana are immensely proud of their country and of what it has achieved in the forty or so years since independence. They have built a prosperous country, brick by brick. They have done so by their own efforts. They have avoided getting into debt. They have been consistently democratic and they have observed the rule of law through all those four decades, even when they have been surrounded by countries in conflict. They have every reason to be proud. A few years ago I had a conversation with a man in Botswana about his country. Our conversation was being filmed by the BBC for a television show. I asked him, “Are you proud of your country?” and he replied, “Yes, I am very proud of Botswana. I am proud to be a Motswana.” And then I saw that tears had come into his eyes. 10 Precious Ramotswe stayed at school until she was sixteen and then she had a series of smallish jobs. She met a handsome trumpeter called Note Mokoti, and she married him. It was a terrible mistake, of the sort that any young person can make when confronted with glamour or good looks. Note was a bad husband and he was violent toward her, hurting her. She had a baby, who lived only a matter of hours. She was able to hold this small scrap of humanity until death took the child from her. Note did not even come to the funeral. Her father, Obed, took her back when Note left. He did not gloat, although he had seen Note for what he was; he simply took her back into his home. In due course Obed himself became ill. The mines had ruined his lungs, and the damage that they had done caught up with him. Part of Mma Ramotswe’s world ended when Obed died. Part of Botswana, this country she loved so much, seemed to wither and recede into the past. 11 She sold a number of the cattle her father had left her and set up her little detective agency near Kgali Hill, on the edge of Gaborone. She had no idea of how to be a private detective, but she managed to get hold of a manual by one Clovis Andersen. This book, The Principles of Private Detection, became her main guide, even if a lot of the advice it gave struck her as being merely a matter of common sense. Incidentally, I am often asked by readers where they can purchase a copy of The Principles of Private Detection. I reply that the book does not exist, which I think causes them disappointment. Perhaps I shall write it myself. Certainly, in a future book I shall write about a visit that Clovis Andersen makes to Botswana. Mma Ramotswe will meet him and will, with her characteristic kindness, do something to help him. I see Clovis Andersen as a bit of a failure; he may be able to write about being a private detective, but I suspect that he will never have been very good at the job. Mma Ramotswe acquired an assistant, Mma Makutsi, a graduate of the Botswana Secretarial College who, in the final examinations of that college, achieved the hitherto unheard-of result of 97 percent. That 97 percent is of immense importance to Mma Makutsi, and she often refers to it. She represents all those who have had to battle to get anywhere in life. She comes from a poor background in the north, and she has had to make do with very little in the material sense. She is a resourceful and intelligent woman, however, and in the later books she finds a kind and wealthy fiancé, Phuti Radiphuti, the proprietor of the Double Comfort Furniture Store. Mma Ramotswe likes Phuti. She sees him as an entirely suitable husband for her assistant. Mma Ramotswe’s husband is Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, the owner of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors and the finest mechanic in all Botswana. He is a good man, but he has certain minor failings, one of which is indecision. It took him a very long time to get round to marrying Mma Ramotswe. Indeed, it was not until the fifth book that this happened, and prior to that I had received many letters from readers inquiring as to why the engagement was proving to be such a long one. But they did eventually get married, in a ceremony performed at the Orphan Farm, with the children singing the hymns and the women ululating with pleasure. The newly married couple moved into Mma Ramotswe’s house on Zebra Drive. They are extremely happy: Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni running his garage and she helping people to solve what she calls “the problems in their lives.” These are often minor personal issues, although every so often something more serious crops up. Mma Ramotswe does not deal with significant crime, however; she is concerned with minor instances of bad behavior, and she usually deals with the offender by getting him or her to promise to behave better in future. Is life really like that? Do people turn over new leaves and reform simply because they have been shamed into doing so by a woman like Mma Ramotswe? Probably not. One has to be realistic about human nature, which is often quite perverse. At the same time, Mma Ramotswe understands that you do not get people to be better people simply by punishing them. Those to whom evil is done do evil in return. W. H. Auden knew that and expressed the thought rather effectively in one of his poems. Mma Ramotswe believes in forgiveness. “I am a forgiving lady,” she says in one of the books. Again, she is very wise. Forgiveness is a great virtue, which unfortunately we may sometimes lose sight of when retribution holds center stage. But we really should be readier to forgive people than to hate them or seek to harm them. Forgiveness allows us to look to the future rather than concentrate on the past. Forgiveness heals. One of Mma Ramotswe’s great heroes is Nelson Mandela. Mandela, perhaps more than any other figure in the twentieth century, showed us all how forgiveness can bring an unhappy chapter to an end. Mma Ramotswe understands that. So we should not be surprised when she lets people off. That does not mean that she condones what they have done or underestimates its impact. It is just that she sees the sterility of pure retribution. She does not
believe that we are helped by inflicting further suffering where there has already been significant pain and distress. I think she is right. 12 Is she a paragon of virtue, some sort of saint? Certainly not. Mma Ramotswe is very human and has her weaknesses. This humanity, I think, is why people respond warmly to her. They see that she, like the rest of us, has those temptations that she finds very difficult to resist. One of these is cake. She very much enjoys the fruit cake served by the matron of the Orphan Farm, Mma Silvia Potokwani. And as a result of this sort of enthusiasm, she is what she calls traditionally built. This means that she is pretty fat, but she believes that a better way of describing it is traditionally built. I am often thanked by people for inventing the term traditionally built. The people who give me thanks for this are often traditionally built themselves. 13 Mma Ramotswe has never been out of Botswana, other than to make a couple of very short trips into South Africa, next door. She has never seen the sea, which she sometimes dreams of seeing. She likes to imagine the sound the sea would make, which she believes is like the sound of wind in the leaves of eucalyptus trees. In spite of never having traveled, she has a profound understanding of human nature. She knows all about the weaknesses of men, but she does not condemn men for them. She understands how hard it is to be a man. She disapproves of boastful talk. She is modest. She is generous. She has a very soft heart for those who are heavily burdened. In one of the books she goes to Mokolodi, a small game reserve near Gaborone. There she sees two American women sitting together. She realizes that one of them looks very emaciated—she is obviously ill. Her friend confirms this. They are doing a final journey together. Mma Ramotswe embraces the sick woman and comforts her. Then she says good-bye to her in Setswana, because that is the language that her heart speaks. She turns away and weeps. Mma Ramotswe would have time for all of us. She would comfort any of us in our sorrow. 14 It is apparent to anybody reading these books that I have affection for Botswana. That is true. I admire the country greatly. I admire the many fine values that one can find in so many people in that part of the world, and also in other countries in Africa. People must not think that Africa is a disaster, that it is a broken continent. It is not. There is still a great deal to be admired and cherished there. Some people have described these books as a love letter to a country. Yes, they are. They do amount to a love letter, and it is a love letter to which I am proud to sign my name. COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS “Jack Taylor,” copyright © 2007, 2009 by Ken Bruen. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Jack Reacher,” copyright © 2007, 2009 by Lee Child. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Hieronymus Bosch,” copyright © 2007, 2009 by Michael Connelly. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Charlie Parker,” copyright © 2008, 2009 by John Connolly. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Elvis Cole and Joe Pike,” copyright © 2007, 2009 by Robert Crais. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Lincoln Rhyme,” copyright © 2007, 2009 by Jeffery Deaver. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Inspector Morse,” copyright © 2007, 2009 by Colin Dexter. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Charlie Resnick,” copyright © 2008, 2009 by John Harvey. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Bob Lee Swagger,” copyright © 2007, 2009 by Stephen Hunter. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus,” copyright © 2008, 2009 by Faye Kellerman. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Alex Delaware,” copyright © 2008, 2009 by Jonathan Kellerman. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Dismas Hardy,” copyright © 2008, 2009 by John Lescroart. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Tess Monaghan,” copyright © 2007, 2009 by Laura Lippman. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Rambo,” copyright © 2008, 2009 by David Morrell. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Mallory,” copyright © 2007, 2009 by Carol O’Connell. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Spenser,” copyright © 2007, 2009 by Robert B. Parker. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Lou Boldt,” copyright © 2008, 2009 by Ridley Pearson. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Charlotte and Thomas Pitt,” copyright © 2006, 2009 by Anne Perry. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop under the title “Thomas and Charlotte Pitt.” “Aloysius X. L. Pendergast,” copyright © 2008, 2009 by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “John Rebus,” copyright © 2007, 2009 by Ian Rankin. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. “Precious Ramotswe,” copyright © 2008, 2009 by Alexander McCall Smith. Originally published by The Mysterious Bookshop. OTTO PENZLER is the proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City. He has founded several mystery-focused imprints, including The Mysterious Press, Otto Penzler Books, and The Armchair Detective Library. He has also edited many mystery anthologies, including the Best American Mystery Stories series, and co-wrote the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, which won an Edgar® Award. He has won the Ellery Queen Award and the Raven Award from Mystery Writers of America for his exceptional contributions to mystery editing, publishing, and bookselling.