This week was Writers’ Week in Adelaide, South Australia; one of the many festival activities happening in Mad March. The city is visited by many national and international authors and all the literary buffs come out to play. I joined in the celebrations by attending an “Evening with Alexander McCall Smith”, best known for his series, The First Ladies’ Detective Agency .

I must confess, I didn’t attend because I’m a mad, keen fan. I went because it was only a half an hour away from where I live, I could afford the ticket, someone offered to take me, and I’ll happily listen to any author talk about their life and work. (Please don’t tell Mr Smith!)

Mr Smith was an amiable and erudite fellow. He’s had the privilege – nay, the blessing – of having been born in Zimbabwe (then, Rhodesia), lived in Scotland, lived in Botswana, back to Scotland, as well as a year in the United States and frequent visits to other foreign countries. He’s discovered Australia in the last decade or so and finds us “intriguing”. So far, so good.

When talking about his writing, he concentrated first on the books set in Botswana, which I would guess are his most popular works. I have a friend, a fellow author, who lives in Botswana so I could have listened to that part of his “chat” all night.

Then he moved on to his other works. As I’d never read any of those, I listened intently to see which would be the best for me to try. However, at the end of it all, I decided they probably weren’t for me. Somewhere in the conversation, Mr McCall Smith said that he liked to write about ordinary people, doing ordinary things. (I had a flashback to Seinfeld’s “show about nothing”.) He perfers realism; eg. “what’s the point of murder mysteries? Murders are a rare occurence. It makes more sense to write about a detective agency that looks into car parking offences, rather than murders.”

Most of the audience laughed along with him and I saw a lot of heads nodding in agreement. He was certainly witty and urbane. However, in my head I was screaming, “NOOOOOOO!!!!!”

You see, when I read I want to be transported out of my ordiinary, mundane, not-much-happens-apart-from-people-I-love-suffering-in-some-awful-way world, and be lifted into another place. I want to experience, vicariously, things that don’t happen in my ordinary world. I want adventure, mystery, magic, a smidge of romance and a puzzle to be solved, preferably strongly laced with a splash of humour.

Yes, The First Ladies’ Detective Agency  investigates simple, ordinary, even banal crimes, but it’s set in Botswana! That’s what makes it exciting and fun to read: it’s in a culture and landscape that is foreign to most of us. Therefore, when we read these books we are transported out of a world we know. We get to experience something new.

I’m sorry, Mr Smith, but I’m not convinced that ordinary people doing real, ordinary things is the sort of thing I want to read about. Mind you, you sell lots and lots of books, enough to allow you to return to Botswana every year, and Australia and Europe quite often. You’re definitely doing better than most of us. So, maybe there’s a huge market of people interested in ho-hum, and I just don’t move in those circles. All power to you, sir.