Alexander McCall Smith was born in 1948 in Bulawayo, in what was then Southern Rhodesia, and was educated there and in Scotland. He first made his name as a lawyer. He became a professor of medical law at the University of Edinburgh, with a particular interest in bioethics. He was made a CBE in 2007 and knighted in the 2024 New Year Honours for services to literature, academia and charity.
Fiction came later, and in quantity. His list runs well past eighty books, taking in novels, children's titles and academic work. The fiction is gentle in tone but has a moral core. His characters spend their time on small questions of conscience, such as how to treat a neighbour or when to forgive. Besides the Botswana books he writes about Edinburgh. The Sunday Philosophy Club (2004) began the Isabel Dalhousie series, about a philosopher who investigates as an amateur. He also wrote 44 Scotland Street and Corduroy Mansions.
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency was published in 1998 by the Scottish firm Polygon. It grew into a series of more than twenty novels. The BBC and HBO adapted it as a television series, shown in 2008 and 2009 and filmed on location in Botswana. One report puts his English-language sales above 40 million by 2010.
Start with The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency itself. Precious Ramotswe opens her agency in Gaborone after her father's death. The cases are mostly domestic puzzles, with one missing child at the centre. Readers who like it can go on to Tears of the Giraffe (2000). Those who prefer an Edinburgh setting can try The Sunday Philosophy Club.
