History Literature / TheNo1LadiesDetectiveAgency

* AlphaBitch: Violet Sephotho and Grace Makutsi's first interaction at the college involved Violet telling Grace to come talk to her GirlPosse... so Violet could make fun of Grace's clothes. She only gets worse from there.

* CelibateHero: Mma Ramotswe was married once, but it turned out poorly for her. Since then, she has sworn off men and was perfectly happy being a single lady. [[spoiler: Until she said yes to Mr. J. L. B Matekoni.]]

** One man one day snapped and ran away as fast as he could... only to be brought down with a rugby tackle by his wife, in front of a group of schoolchildren.

* MistakenForProstitute: Mma Ramotswe is accosted by a man while on stakeout near a bar. She tells him he know his wife and promptly get the hell out of there, insisting he wasn't going near the bar, which are a blight on Botswana.

* TheNameless: Mr. JLB Matekoni has two apprentices: Charlie and the younger one, "whose name no one ever used". It's [[spoiler:Fanwell]].

* SexySecretary: Mma Makutsi averts this. She only makes a half-decent stab at HotLibrarian, actually and says she doesn't like them. Her rival from the secretarial college however exploits this trope in order to get jobs despite getting half of Makutsi's score.

* MultiethnicName: Grace and Phuti's son is named Itumaleng Clovis Radiphuti (after Clovis Andersen, the detective whose book is the agency's bible).

* CoolCar: Averted: While BMWs are repeatedly mentioned as being the mark of a successful person, Mr. JLB Matekoni doesn't like them due to the excessive electronics inside which he knows nothing about.

The books have been adapted for television by the BBC in conjunction with HBO, with a two-hour pilot in 2008 followed by a six-part series in 2009, based on the first ten books. The pilot was the last work of director Creator/AnthonyMinghella before his death in 2008. The series was canceled after its first season.

You have probably heard of precisely two works set in UsefulNotes/{{Botswana}}. This is the one that isn't ''Film/TheGodsMustBeCrazy''.

Series of 23 (so far) books, written by Alexander [=McCall=] Smith, involving Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's first female detective and therefore number one. The series started in 1998 and is still ongoing as of 2022, releasing one book roughly every year.

The books have been adapted for TV, with the two-hour pilot in Easter 2008, followed by a six-part series in 2009, based on the first ten books. The books were originally going to be filmed in South Africa, but Botswana's government, realising the tourism that would come its way, offered Creator/TheBBC $5 million to film there instead. So they did.

The pilot was the last work of director Creator/AnthonyMinghella before his death in 2008.

!!This book series contains examples of:

* DomesticAbuse: Precious' ex-husband, jazz musician Note Mokoti, beat her so hard that she miscarried. Mme. Ramotswe notes that this is a particularly common problem where she lives.

* InnocentlyInsensitive: People all over Botswana will call Mma Ramotswe "fat" or a "fatty" to her face. Precious doesn't seem to mind though, since being fat isn't considered a slight to [[BigBeautifulWoman the traditional African woman.]]

* TheLoad: Mr. JLB Matekoni's apprentice mechanics are anything but competent no matter how much time he spends to teach them something.

* BabiesMakeEverythingBetter: Subverted with Charlie: His first reaction on learning he's the father of twins is to run like hell (fortunately for everyone involved, it turns out he isn't the father). When Mma Makutsi has her baby, he goes into adoring big-brother mode... but this dies down when he no longer needs to bring the baby to the agency.

* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: Charlie thinks up a way to get a criminal to rescind his testimony by making him think Mma Ramotswe is a ProfesionalKiller who will silence him at the first sign of non-cooperation at the trial. Mma Ramotswe has to spell out that threatening a witness is a very serious crime, even when done with the best of intentions.

* SexSells: Violet Sephotho manages to sell four beds on her first day [[spoiler:by suggesting that if the (male) client buys it, she'll be happy to help him test it out].

* AlphaBitch: violet Sephotho and Grace Makutsi's first interaction at the college involved Violet telling Grace to come talk to her GirlPosse... so Violet could make fun of Grace's clothes. She only gets worse from there.

* TheDiseaseThatWillNotBeNamed: AIDS is never directly referred to by name but rather "the infection" or "the slim disease".

* MrsFanservice: Although Violet Sephotho is never actually ''described'' in detail apart from being "very glamorous" (the viewpoint characters being less than thrilled that she exists), the fact that she keeps finding men to pay for her lifestyle (and Charlie's admiring reaction when he runs into her) marks her as one.

* ScrewTheRuleIHaveConnections: Noted to be a nationwide problem at various points.

** Mma Ramotswe discovers she has a sister... meaning her father, who throughout the series was presented as a paragon of masculine virtue by literally every single person who'd ever met him, cheated on her mother, who'd died shortly after Precious was born. [[spoiler:Fortunately it turns out the birthdates were wrong, and she's ''younger'' than Precious]].

* TheDiseaseThatWillNotBeNamed: AIDS is never directly referred to by name but rather "the infection".

* GoodOldWays: The old Botswana morality. Mma Ramotswe frequently bemoans the lack of it, though she picks and chooses the parts she likes. She has very modern ideas of gender and sexuality, but her ideas seem to be grounded in her belief in respecting everyone. She hates most modern technology and refuses to use computers and telephones.

** Mma Makutsi dislikes the MamaDidntRaiseNoCriminal trope, complaining about mothers being blind to their children's thoughts. Her husband unwisely asks if this applies to their son, and she juts stares at him, asking "What faults?"

* {{Irony}}: The motto of the Botswana Secretarial College a it appears on the buildings is "Be Acurate". Mma Makutsi pointed this out to them, but they've yet to fix the mistake.

* OrphanageOfLove: Mma Potokwane's orphan farm.

* WhyDoYouKeepChangingJobs: Violet Sephotho continuously reappears in the protagonists' lives in an antagonistic capacity, be it running a secretarial agency, a bed saleswoman, a dress-shop owner, a restaurant critic, opening a fraudulent secretarial college...

* BrokenPedestal: Subverted when Clovis Andersen (author of Mma Ramotswe's go-to book ''The Principles of Detection'') shows up in ''The Limpopo Academy of Detection'': he keeps downplaying his achievements and is surprised that they keep quoting the book at him (which is taken for modesty), but he proves instrumental in solving the case by suggesting alternate leads the local detectives would never have imagined. At the end he freely admits [[spoiler:he's nowhere near the GreatDetective she thinks him to be, his book had to be self-published (and it only sold 30 copies out of 200 printed), and he has no idea how one copy ended up in Africa of all places,]] but she waves it away, demonstrating the difference he made (via her) in people's lives.

* HypocriticalHumor: Mma Ramotswe is sometimes exasperated by Mma Potokwane shanghaing her husband into maintaining mechanical equipment long past its expiration date... while doing everything in her power to keep him from declaring that her van needs replacing. Not to mention throwing out his clothes despite their still being wearable.