Precious Ramotswe, known as Mma to just about everyone, is the 35-year-old proprietor of her own detective agency, the first woman private detective in Botswana. From her new office on the outskirts of the capital city Gabrorone, she tracks down missing husbands and children, follows the children of over-protective parents, and trades barbs with local gangsters, all the while telling her own story and keeping up with her friends and neighbors.

Smith, a native of Africa who once taught law at the Univerisity of Botswana, has created a character and evoked a place and culture in such a charming way that reading this book is almost effortless. The tone of the dialog, the thoughts and histories of the characters, the achievements and challenges of the culture, the sparse beauty of the land—they all transported me to another world and opened to me a different view of Africa.

At the center of the story is Mma Ramotswe herself. Raised by her loving father, once married to an abusive husband, mother of a still-born child—Mma is full of curiosity, kindness, fairness, and love for her country and continent. In her uniquely chosen profession, she faces some some stereotyping by males who assume a woman can’t perform detective work, but overall the people she meets trust her and her methods.

Her cases are an interesting mixture of setups you might find in any made-for-TV mystery and those that are fixed firmly in her African setting. That is part of the charm. Mma, her friends, and the targets of her investigations are near to the Western reader in some ways, and yet uniquely African in others. In both similarity and difference, she and her story are both entertaining and an intriguing introduction to African peoples, lands, and cultures.