Missing cows and absent husbands, hungry crocodiles and a cast of rogues and innocents sweltering under the African sun. - it's all in a day's work for Mma Precious Ramotswe, the founding mamma of The No1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

Botswana bestsellers

A woman of warmth, wisdom and voluptuous abundance, Precious is an emerging literary icon, whose adventures flow from the pen of a self-effacing Scottish professor.

At the age of 55, Alexander McCall Smith is the new kid on the literary block. His Detective Agency series has been on the New York Times bestseller list for months and seems set to make an equal impact on readers in the UK.

Oscar-winning director Anthony Minghella has even snapped up the filming rights. As McCall shares his Edinburgh neighbourhood with one JK Rowling, there must surely be something potent in the local highland water.

Criminal law

McCall Smith's tales of Precious' singular sleuthing take place in a village in Botswana, and contain gentle fables of everyday African life. The author is keen to show the "small, everyday Botswana that the tourist doesn't get to see", and the wealth of detail in the novels is the rich fruit of his own background.

McCall Smith grew up in Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia, before moving to Scotland to study. As well as working on the criminal law of Botswana, he helped set up the country's law faculty at university. For a long time, though, he has been a professor of medical law in Edinburgh, an international authority on genetics, and advisor to Unesco and the British government on bioethics.

Audience pleaser

If his day job presents its own philosophical complexities and dilemmas, McCall Smith's writing offers an escape to a place that celebrates moral certainty, warmth and compassion. The author considers it "legitimate to write about virtue" and The Detective Agency series, in particular, shows "qualities that are found all over Botswana. People don't go in for distance and insincerity".

The fifth instalment in the series, The Full Cupboard of Life, has just been published and writer's block is not proving a problem for a chap who can polish off three thousand words before lunch. The number of his readers is now in the millions and, eager to please, McCall Smith believes that "people enjoy the books and it's almost unkind to say I'm not going to write any more".

Caroline Frost

Previous documentaries on BBC Four

Further link

Interview
McCall Smith talks to Readers Read website

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