From a far and lovely country. Alexander McCall Smith. 2023.

If you are the founder and Managing Director of the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency you may expect complete strangers to approach you with their problems when they see you having dinner with your husband in a peri-peri restaurant. And if you are Precious Ramotswe you are a king and helpful person who will be willing to take on a quest to find the relatives of a man who many years ago, left the country for the uncertainties and dangers of a distant conflict.

While that was going on though, there may be other things that claim your attention - such as the shocking news that a club that calls itself the Cool Singles Evening Club is encouraging married men to pretend to be single and meet women under false pretences. Who can be behind such a distasteful venture? MMA Ramotswe is clearly going to have to employ the utmost tact in dealing with such a delicate situation.

And all the time, she and her assistant, Grace Makutsi, are getting on with their normal lives - which, of course, include birthdays and the buying of birthday presents. A new dress makes. Finds present, but not if, when being tried on it splits in a way that is thought to be irreparable. If ever an emergency called for the problem-solving skills of MMA Potokwani this is it. But, despite these rumbles, life in Botswana, that far and lovely country, continues relatively smoothly. That after all, is what MMA Ramotswe an her friends want - and most certainly deserve.