Tea Time for the Traditionally Built

The tenth book in the best-selling No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, Alexander McCall Smith’s mystery novel Tea Time for the Traditionally Built (2009) is set in Gaborone, Botswana. It follows the main character and lead detective Precious Ramotswe, a Botswana woman who takes on a case with her assistant Mma. Makutsi to find a traitor in the local, struggling football club the Kalahari Swoopers.

Precious Ramotswe is the only female detective in all of Botswana, which only makes her more determined to solve each case that comes her way. In Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, Precious is plagued by a number of personal and professional struggles. First, her beloved and trusty van has broken down again – Precious brings the van to her husband, a prolific mechanic, hoping he will fix it for her. She does have some concerns, however, that her husband, who is sick of fixing the old vehicle, will sell it behind her back. Precious soon realizes her instincts were right when her husband surprises her with a new van that lacks character and won't do the job at all. Precious undertakes the first mystery of the book: finding her old van and getting it back.

Meanwhile, Precious's assistant, Mma. Makutsi, is having some struggles of her own. Her engagement to Mr. Phuti Radiphuti has been complicated by an interloper – Violet Sephotho who is after Phuti, no matter the cost. At first, Mma. Makutsi has faith that her fiancé won't fall for the obvious ploy at the hands of a not-so-bright Jezebel, but as Mma. Makutsi and Precious soon realize, men and women have different kinds of logic.



As for her paid work, Precious has been hired by the esteemed owner of the Kalahari Swoopers, a local football club, to investigate a string of unprecedented losses. The owner is convinced someone is fixing the matches – why else, he claims, would they be losing so badly? Unfortunately, neither Precious nor Mma. Makutsi knows much about football, so they enlist the help of a young local boy to keep an eye out to help them pinpoint the traitor who is ruining the team.

More trouble brews in Precious's search for her van. It is relatively simple for her to track down whom her husband sold it to, but getting the van back is not quite that easy. Precious learns that an unknown thief stole the van soon after it was purchased. Of course, Precious is on the case, determined to track down the van she loves and bring it back home.

As the novel unfolds, Precious and Mma. Makutsi have to come to terms with something they have known all along – that the gulf between the worldviews of men and women is so enormous, it can feel impossible to breach it. Both women are forced to face issues of sexism at the hands of their football club-owning client, who suggests that football is not a “woman's issue,” and so the ladies will never be able to understand. Mma. Makutsi is also forced to consider the ways in which her husband's perspective on the issue of Violent Sephotho will never be the same as hers – what she sees as bad behavior and selfishness, he sees as a bit of harmless fun.



By the end of the novel, the women triumph in their mysteries, proving themselves once again as talented, worldly women with the ability to do anything they set their minds to.

Alexander McCall Smith is a professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh and an esteemed author of fiction. Born to British parents in Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia), he has written mystery and crime novels, books for children, and a number of academic texts in his prolific and multi-faceted career. His most famous series is the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which has sold more than 40 million copies and been translated into 46 languages.