The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith

One more from the stable of Alexander McCall Smith and the delightful Mma Ramotse of Botswana's No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency. In the Kalahari Typing School for Men, Mma Ramotswe is faced with competition from Satisfaction Guaranteed Detective Agency (ex-CID, ex-Johannesburg, ex-New York, Ex-cellent! boasts their name board). She has to resolve the problems of clients who wish to set right their conscience about past misdoings and clients who suspect their husbands of philandering. In this book, Mma Makutsi, Mma Ramotswe's secretary starts the eponymous Kalahari Typing School for Men and gets romantically involved with one of her students. An involvement which puts Mma Ramotswe in a quandary. But as always, Mma Ramotswe's intuitive intelligence ensures that all situations are negotiated delicately and conclusions arrived at satisfactorily.

The book is strewn with simple home truths. Mma Ramotswe's legendary views on men, books, Africa and the old-Botswana way of life make you hanker for more from this straight-talking, no-nonsense lady. And if you read really carefully, you'll even notice the author in a walk-on part.

I raise my cup of bush tea to you, Mma! One-derful!

Please click here and then click on Tuesday's play to listen to a dramatised version of one of Mma Ramotswe's cases. Quick, this is not available online for long.