Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s premier—perhaps only—lady private detective, deals on a weekly basis with human selfishness and malfeasance. She deals with it on a weekly basis because her detective business is not very busy; many days are filled with tea drinking, paper shuffling, dress shopping and doughnut eating rather than investigating the relative scarcity of crimes. But Precious knows about the dark recesses of human nature; she has clear eyes for our murky motivations and harmful behaviour. In this she is joined by a huge throng of characters from modern fiction. What differentiates Precious Ramotswe from so many other characters is…