Number one detective novelist with a high noon appointment

Fans of the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series will be pleased to hear that on Friday, March 23, Alexander McCall Smith has a noon appointment with the Radio 4 Today presenter James Naughtie to discuss the latest exploits of the traditionally built Botswanan Mma Ramotswe, her husband Mr J.L.B. Matekoni and other regular characters.

In The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, change is in the air as three of the characters try out new jobs with varying degrees of success. Throughout it all Mma Ramotswe tries to do her best to help those around her and solve her latest case, involving the deaths of three hospital patients in suspicious circumstances.

This eighth book is as enjoyable as the last seven, transporting you effortlessly to the Botswanan landscape and a much slower, politer way of life. Having lived and worked in Botswana for several years, Sandy, as he prefers to be known, set the books here partly because he thinks it is such a wonderful country.

"They are remarkably nice people and I wanted to pay a bit of a tribute," said Sandy. "People get such a negative view of Africa and there are obviously lots of negative, unpleasant things happening - I don't deny that - but I think also people lose sight of the fact that there are a lot of people who are actually leading very good lives there."

To her writer, Mma Ramotswe symbolises kindness. "She represents a particularly cheerful, optimistic view of life. She goes beyond her time and place and I think that's important in fiction, that the characters should be able to speak to people beyond their immediate circumstances."

There is a humour and a poignancy about the lives of his characters and the wider Botswana that he is describing.

"I don't think people get my writing quite right if they say it's all totally cheerful. It is meant to be optimistic, but at the same time there is an awareness of the tragedy of the world."

At one point, he envisaged an eight-book cap, but now he has agreed to write a further three.

"I thought, my goodness, one has to have some sort of notion of when things will come to an end. But I found that I really didn't want to stop."

The main characters all muse about life, which is not surprising, given that this Emeritus Professor of Law at Edinburgh University is very interested in issues of moral philosophy and ethics. Indeed, he has worked for international organisations like Unesco and the British Medical Journal's committee on bioethics.

Now a full-time writer, he publishes around five books a year, exploring moral dilemmas in more depth in his Sunday Philosophy series with Isabel Dalhousie, while his love of Edinburgh and its people is given full rein in the 44 Scotland Street series.

Before Mma Ramotswe made him famous, he had already written more than 30 children's books and his second appearance at midday on March 24 is for a children's event. I asked what he liked about writing for children as opposed to adults.

"Writing for children can be great fun. You can put in a lot of adventure and fun into them. You can be very imaginative, almost anarchic."

His publishing career as a children's author began by accident.

"There'd been a literary competition in Scotland run by Chambers the publishers and there were three categories of entry," he explained. He entered the adult and children's novel categories and won a prize in the children's section.

He writes for seven to nine-year-olds. "In my view, that's absolutely mainstream, middle children's fiction."

He will be talking about his latest book Akimbo and the Snakes, which is about a little African boy who goes to his uncle's snake park, hoping to help him catch a very rare and deadly green mamba.

"I will talk about other children's books as well. I'll have competitions, give books away and generally hype them up. There will be big surprises and many prizes for meritorious children."

He sounds like he is looking forward to the whole experience and, it turns out, he rather enjoys literary festivals.

"It's a chance to meet people who've been reading the books and to listen to what they've got to say. And it's an opportunity to get a bit of reaction to what one's written, which is always very useful. Often people come up with very valuable suggestions or complaints."

But it goes beyond just his own books. "It's also the lovely atmosphere of a literary festival, the shared joy in books and that's marvellous." But then so are his novels. It sounds like both events will be sell-outs, so book your tickets now.

Alexander McCall Smith is in conversation with James Naughtie about The Good Husband of Zebra Drive at noon on Friday, March 23, at the Marquee, Christ Church. Tickets cost £8; The author will talk about Akimbo and the Snakes in the Newman Rooms at noon on Saturday, March 24. Tickets cost £4.50.