Thank you, Alexander McCall Smith,for 227 pages of time with dear friends and another wonderful Botswana story. Precious remains someone we love to spend time with, and Mr. JLB Matekoni is still the good man we respect, who loves Precious and does what is right. But despite his statement that he is one of those people who is not modern ("we do not want things to move forwards at all"), Mr. JLB Matekoni faces the need to make a dramatic change at Speedy Motors.

As a result, change also comes to the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency. While the agency tries to identify a woman who claims to be suffering from amnesia, Grace embraces the challenge of owning her own restaurant, a task more complex than she imagined, and one made more difficult by an old nemesis. The girl from Bobonong has a chance to do for someone else what was done for her, and faces a moment of reckoning and then pride in who she has become. Dr. Moffat appears offstage, and our final old friend, matron of the Orphan Farm, plays pivotal roles in the happiness and good fortune of Charlie, Precious, Grace, Phuti, Mr. JLB Matekoni, and a frightened, desperate woman.

As Fanwell says, "sometimes there will be a reason to go forward". The lives of people readers care so much about continue to change in countless ways, with friendships and loyalties deepening, and grace, gratitude, compassion and kindness coloring their lives despite the Violet Sephothos and Note Mokotis of this world. New small pleasures and new joys (including Itumelang Clovis Radiphuti), new worries and sorrows, and the same things that have always mattered most are all here in this gem of a book, the 15th gift in a series from the writer I would most like to meet in a Scottish pub, on a park bench anyplace in the world, or in an afternoon cafe in Gaborone.

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