When I'm really stressed out I love to retreat to the world of Precious Ramotswe. I brew a cup of tea (but not the red bush tea favored by Mma Ramotswe) and settle down for a satisfying read. The crimes in this series are rarely violent; most often they are crimes of selfishness and greed. Someone wants to get ahead quickly so they lie, cheat or steal. But Mma Ramotswe, aided by her associate Mma Makutsi, her husband J. L. B. Maketone, and other miscellaneous friends and acquaintances, always discovers the culprit. Along the way, I'm treated to passages like this one:
"The man riding the cart pulled on the reins, took off his hat and wiped his brow. She caught her breath: the hat was so like the hat that her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, had worn every day of his life after he had returned from Mochudi- or so it had seemed to her. The hat that they had tucked into his coffin to accompany him on that final journey to the grave; the hat that he had once lost on the road and that had been rescued by some stranger and placed on a wall where its owner might see it; that same shapeless hat that she had felt embarrassed about as a small girl, other girls fathers having more modern hats, but that she had come to love as standing for everything that he, and indeed Botswana, stood for - decency, quiet, courtesy - the things that were slipping away in the world but that were remembered and pined for."
Large print ed., 391 pages.
