In the Company of Cheerful Ladies
First edition cover, Polygon Press
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| Author | Alexander McCall Smith |
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| Cover artist | Design: Barrie Tullett & James Hutcheson; photo: Sandy Grant |
| Country | Scotland |
| Language | English |
| Series | The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series |
| Genre | Detective, Mystery novel |
| Publisher | Polygon Books |
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Publication date
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2004 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback), Audio (Cassette & CD) |
| Pages | 231 hardback |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 56356719 |
| Preceded by | The Full Cupboard of Life (2004) |
| Followed by | Blue Shoes and Happiness (2006) |
In the Company of Cheerful Ladies is the sixth in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith, set in Gaborone, Botswana, and featuring the Motswana protagonist Precious Ramotswe.
Work and personal worries, and the reappearance of her cruel first husband, threaten the happiness of Mma Ramotswe and her new husband Mr JLB Matekoni. Her assistant, Mma Makutsi, and a new employee to whom Mma Ramotswe has been kind, are determined to repay their debt of gratitude by helping her in their turn. With diligent detective work, her problems are overcome. Mma Makutsi herself finds love at last.
The author received recognition for this series in 2004 with the Dagger in the Library from the Crime Writers Association and Author of the Year from British Book Awards. This novel received mixed reviews. One newspaper found the writing to create "an utter and truthful sense of place, of belonging" while another found the story lacking in interest. The first printing was 101,000, compared to 2,000 or fewer for the earlier novels, in response to the interest in the United States and in England. Sales of all books in the series, in English, exceeded five million.
Mma Ramotswe and her new husband settle down to married life with their foster-children, but problems are piling up. The tenant of Mr JLB Matekoni's house is running an illegal drinking den. Then Charlie, the apprentice, gets entangled with a wealthy married woman. Mma Ramotswe accidentally knocks a man off his bicycle with her van, as she sees Charlie entering the expensive car driven by a wealthy woman. Mr Polopetsi was not injured, but Mma Ramotswe learns his story; he has been unemployed following a spell in prison after what appears to have been a miscarriage of justice. She gets his bike fixed by the apprentice and then Mma Ramotswe persuades her husband to employ him out of guilt and sympathy. He proves an asset to the garage and to the detective service. Mma Ramotswe's violent ex-husband Note Mokote reappears and demands money from her.
Mma Ramotswe is shaken deeply as she realizes she never got a divorce from Mokote years ago, threatening her new marriage. Check in hand, she drives to his mother's home to deliver it. Note is not there. His mother tells her that Note was married to another woman at the time of her marriage to Note, and had a child with that wife. This takes the weight off Mma Ramotswe, as she realizes he was the bigamist, and they were never legally married. When he appears at her office, she faces him herself, no longer shaking in fear at his violence, with two decent men in her life waiting in the background as the conversation proceeds.
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