47 pages • 1 hour read
Alexander McCall SmithThe No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 11-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “Big Car Guilt”
Three days after the Patel case is settled, Mma Ramotswe is paid over two thousand pula for her services. She is then visited by a new client, Mma Pekwane, who fears that her husband’s new car is stolen. Mma Pekwane asks Mma Ramotswe to learn who the car belongs to and return it to its rightful owners. Mma Ramotswe calls J.L.B. Matekoni to learn about the market for stolen cars; he agrees to help her find the car’s identifying numbers. Mma Ramotswe arranges for Mma Pekwane to distract her husband while Rra Matekoni sneaks in the garage and records the numbers. The following weekend, Mma Ramotswe gives the car’s identifying numbers to Billy Pilani, a schoolfriend who is now working as a police officer. He confirms that the car was stolen and contacts the owner’s insurance company, who arrange to pick up the car in Gaborone. Mma Ramotswe obtains the car keys from Mma Pekwane, and moves it to the arranged location. When her husband realizes that his car has been stolen, Mma Pekwane offers to call the police. Her husband hesitates and says that he’ll look for it himself. Mma Pekwane realizes that she was right: The car was stolen. Mma Ramotswe says that the experience proves lightning can strike twice.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Mma Ramotswe’s House in Zebra Drive”
Mma Ramotswe’s home was built in 1968 on a corner lot on Zebra Drive in the outskirts of town. Because the house is on a corner, people sometimes loiter nearby and spit or throw trash into the yard. This is the only problem Mma Ramotswe has with her house, and her gardener takes care of the rubbish. She is proud to have been able to buy the house after her father’s death, before housing prices became unreasonable. The yard of the house is filled with various trees and shrubs, including a purple bougainvillea, pawpaw, and pumpkins. The covered verandah is also filled with plants such as elephant ear and ferns. In the living room, Mma Ramotswe has a fireplace with a large mantle where she stores her treasures: a Queen Elizabeth II coronation cup, a plate commemorating the first president of Botswana, and a framed picture of her father, taken on his 60th birthday. Mma Ramotswe imagines her father walking in the house and expressing his pride in her. The house is cared for by Mma Ramotswe’s maid, Rose, who works to support her four children. Despite her troubles, Rose always sings while she works, and her singing alerts Mma Ramotswe to her arrival each day.
Chapter 13 Summary: “Why Don’t You Marry Me?”
As a business owner and a homeowner, Mma Ramotswe knows she has more than most of her neighbors. Moreover, her life is better than it was when she was married to Note Mokoti. She describes her unhappiness during their marriage as a black dog following her around. If Mma Ramotswe had listened to her family, she never would have married Note Mokoti. Her father warned her that Note would abuse her, and she ran out of the room sobbing. The memory of that fight cuts at her heart, and she wishes she could go back and make different choices.
She shares these thoughts with J.L.B. Matekoni, who says he has made hundreds of mistakes in his life and would change many of them if he could. She is surprised, having thought that everything had gone well in his life, unlike in her own. Rra Matekoni is equally surprised, wondering what mistakes she could have made. She responds that marrying Note was a mistake. Rra Matekoni stands and asks Mma Ramotswe to marry him. She responds that he is a good man, and that if she were going to remarry, she would choose him, but that she cannot marry again ever. Rra Matekoni is silent, but not angry.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Handsome Man”
Mma Ramotswe’s next case is brought by Alice Busang, a woman who thinks that her husband, Kremlin, has been unfaithful. In Mma Ramotswe’s experience, all men except ministers and headmasters cheat on their wives. Alice and Mma Ramotswe bond over the difficulties of dating and marriage in Botswana, and Mma Ramotswe agrees to take the case. Mma Busang asks for proof that her husband is unfaithful.
The next week, Mma Ramotswe follows Kremlin Busang from his office to the Go Go Handsome Man’s Bar. Studying his picture, she determines that he looks like a ladies’ man, and wonders why Mma Busang married him. She follows him into the bar, and he immediately starts flirting with her. Mma Ramotswe makes an effort to touch his leg with hers, and invites him over to her house for a drink. When they get there, she flirts some more but tells Kremlin he can’t stay. Before he leaves, she asks to take a picture of him. He agrees and kisses her as the camera flashes. A few days later, Mma Ramotswe shows Alice Busang the photograph as proof of her husband’s infidelity. Mma Busang is furious, and storms out, calling Mma Ramotswe fat and a husband-stealer. Mma Ramotswe thinks that she should waive her fee.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s Discovery”
After Mma Busang leaves, Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi laugh about the situation. Mma Ramotswe leaves the agency to tell J.L.B. Matekoni about the Busang case. When she arrives, he seems preoccupied, and she wonders if he is angry that she rejected his proposal. Mma Ramotswe is grateful that her life is no longer complicated by love and sex. She no longer worries how she looks or what people think of her. She remembers reading that men think about sex over 60 times a day, and wonders if Rra Matekoni is thinking about sex. When she asks what he’s thinking about, Rra Matekoni closes the door and tells her he found something disturbing. While examining a car that had been damaged in an accident, he found a small bag in the glove compartment containing a bone, a piece of skin, and a small wooden bottle. Mma Ramotswe suspects this is muti, or traditional medicine based on human body parts. Rra Matekoni believes the bone and skin are human, and Mma Ramotswe takes a bone to test. Rra Matekoni reveals that the car belonged to Charlie Gotso, a powerful and influential man who makes life difficult for his enemies. Mma Ramotswe and Rra Matekoni are both deeply disturbed by the connection.
Chapter 16 Summary: “The Cutting of Fingers and Snakes”
Mma Ramotswe’s next client is factory owner Hector Lepodise, who is being sued by a former employee claiming that he lost a finger in one of the Lepodise factories. Lepodise’s records show that the injury was minor, and that the employee, Solomon Moretsi, left the factory shortly after. Mma Ramotswe agrees to investigate the situation. She calls a number of insurance agencies and discovers that Moretsi had previously sued another employer for the loss of the same finger.
Mma Ramotswe drives north to Mahalapye to meet with the former employee and his lawyer. While driving, she hits a cobra. When she doesn’t see the cobra in her rearview mirror, Mma Ramotswe pulls over, afraid that the cobra will sneak into the cabin. A stranger who stops to help finds the cobra under the hood, and encourages her to start the engine, killing the cobra instantly. Mma Ramotswe continues on to Mahalapye, where she confronts the lawyer with evidence of his client’s fraud. Moretsi begs them not to report his crimes, explaining that he needs the money to support his sister, who is sick. Mma Ramotswe agrees, warning him of the consequences if he commits a similar fraud again. As she leaves, she brags about killing the cobra.
Chapters 11-16 Analysis
National Pride in Botswana is an important theme throughout The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency; in this section of the novel, Mma Ramotswe’s national pride is contrasted by increasing moments of violence. Mma Ramotswe’s pride in Botswana’s history is evident from the description of her home. Over the fireplace, “a matter of pride for Mma Ramotswe” (133), is her collection of “special china, her Queen Elizabeth II teacup and her commemoration plate with the picture of Sir Seretse Khama, President, Kgosi of the Bangwato people, Statesman” (133). The knighthood (indicated by Sir) was given to Khama by Queen Elizabeth as a marker of his service to the British Empire; meanwhile, Kgosi is a Setswana word for tribal chief. This interlinking of British and Tswana traditions shows that Mma Ramotswe is proud of Botswana as an independent member of the Commonwealth Nations. Ramotswe celebrates Queen Elizabeth II, who “loved Botswana too, and understood” (133). This positive representation may be attributed to the fact that Alexander McCall Smith, as a British writer, is himself a member of the colonial power. Nevertheless, Mma Ramotswe’s attitude suggests a comfort with these dual identities that, she suggests, are a part of modern Botswana, and reflective of the country’s unity and social cohesion.
Despite Mma Ramotswe’s pride in her community, the chapter is also full of indications that life in Botswana is far from perfect, especially for women. Two of the three cases Mma Ramotswe takes in this section are attributed to “masculine bad behavior” (126). In Chapter 11, Mma Pekwane seeks out Mma Ramotswe to assuage her guilt over her husband’s actions. Mma Ramotswe’s nonchalant response to the case suggests that this is just one of the minor indignities to which women are subjected. The case of Alice Busang’s unfaithful husband in Chapter 14 demonstrates a more serious problem: sexual and romantic infidelity. Mma Ramotswe is unsurprised by Mma Busang’s concerns: “all men carried on with ladies, in her experience. The only men who did not were ministers of religion and headmasters” (139). Although the episode ends with Mma Busang furious at Mma Ramotswe, the women initially bond over their shared experience as “the victims of the fecklessness of men” (140). Solomon Moretsi’s later claim that he committed fraud to provide for a sister dying of “a disease that is killing everybody these days” (173), referring to AIDS, highlights the significance of “masculine bad behavior” (126). AIDS infects women who are given little sexual autonomy and who are put at risk by unfaithful men. The fact that the disease is never named is representative of the stigma and taboo surrounding the AIDS crisis in Botswana and across Africa in the 1990s. That Moretsi has been driven to commit fraud in order to care for his sister shows how patriarchal male attitudes around sex negatively affect whole communities, men as well as women.
Fingers are a recurring image in this part of the novel. McCall Smith creates a parallel between the found finger that may be part of a muti practice and the finger that Moretsi alleges he has lost, perhaps linking ideas of Botswana’s past and its industrial present. The two fingers also create dark ironic humor and suspense in relation to the solving of cases: Rra Matekoni and Mma Ramotswe find a finger but it is not the “lost” finger and draws them into a deeper mystery.
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