Ugh! I had just been boasting to Greg that I hadn’t had a cold in a long time when whammo. The Theophany troparion hadn’t left my mind before some nasty germs decided to take up residence in my poor old body. As things have progressed, my head has gotten stuffier and my voice has gotten lower and huskier. Yesterday I was Suzanne Pleshette. Today I’m just a lush who smokes cigars.

Definitely a time to hole up in the den and try to recover a little humanity. So the room heater goes on in the den (bringing the dog from anywhere in the house to plop directly in front of it). An afternoon pot of tea gets brewed up — something special, I think. This is a job for the intense orange-spice Russian tea that I bought in Alaska — a tea of such a strident pungency that I’ve had to store it in a heavy glass container just to keep all my more delicate teas from smelling like cinnamon and cloves.

And the book to read? Well, it just has to be one of “The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency” books. I’m up to the sixth in this series — “In the Company of Cheerful Ladies” — but as those who have read the books know, it doesn’t matter all that much which one you read. They’re all good, they’re all pleasant, they’re all meant to be read and savored like a visit with a friend or a good cup of tea.

For those who haven’t read them, the books detail the comings and goings of Precious Ramotswe, a woman in Botswana who comes into a small inheritance and decides to open a detective agency. That could make the series like something on the PBS’ show “Mystery” except … well, it’s just not. Mma Ramotswe — all the women are referred to as ‘Mma’ — doesn’t generally deal with the kinds of major mysteries solved by Hercule Poirot, or even Hettie Wainthrop. You might have an entire book where the most difficult problem anyone brings to her is whether an employee of theirs is stealing or not, or whether Mma Ramotswe’s good husband, Mr. J. L. B. Matekoni will follow through with the parachute jump he promised to do to benefit the orphanage. Other things might happen, other characters might go through different things, but in the end if someone asked you want the book was about, you may really not be able to say.

Or you might say what you could say for all of the books in this series, “It’s about Africa (or at least Botswana). And goodness. And happiness.” The Scottish author, Alexander McCall Smith, was born in Zimbabwe and taught at the University of Botswana, so he obviously knows the way things feel and the way people talk in Africa. And besides these details, there’s a pacing to things that is distinctly non-European.

But I can save words. Here’s the opening paragraph of “In the Company of Cheerful Ladies”:

Mma Ramotswe was sitting alone in her favourite cafe, on the edge of the shopping centre at the Gaborone end of the Tlokweng Road. It was a Saturday, the day that she preferred above all others, a day on which one might do as much or as little as one liked, a day to have lunch with a friend at the President Hotel, or, as on that day, to sit by oneself and think about the events of the week and the state of the world. This cafe was a good place to be, for several reasons. Firstly, there was the view, that of a stand of eucalyptus trees with foliage of a comforting dark green which made a sound like the sea through the leaves. Or that, at least, was the sound which Mma Ramotswe imagined the sea to make. She had never seen the ocean, wich was far away from land-locked Botswana; far away across the deserts of Namibia, across the red sands and the dry mountains. But she could imagine it when she listened to the eucalyptus trees in the wind and closed her eyes. Perhaps one day she would see it, and would stand on the shore and let the waves wash over her feet. Perhaps.

If your response to that paragraph is “Huh. Does the pace pick up later on?” then you don’t need to bother getting any of these books. Because it doesn’t really. Even when there are big jobs, life-changing decisions and cobras in the office, the storytelling is as gentle and unhurried as one of Mma Ramotswe’s frequent tea-breaks with her favorite bush tea.

If your response to the paragraph, on the other hand, is “How can I go to that place?” your path is clear. There are eight in the series. They’re all good.

Oops. My tea is cold. I’ve got to go. Mma Ramotswe would understand.