The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency of Gabarone, Botswana, takes on a new client in Precious and Grace. True to form, Alexander McCall Smith’s fine process of “getting there” wins out over shootouts and car chases any old day, and his asides—often important clues in traditional whodunits—are, well, just asides.

The series reads like a pleasantly low-key moral tale. It’s all pretty much down to the ruminations of Mma Ramotswe, No. 1’s founder and owner, who has commandeered the series through 17 leisurely installments. “Commandeered” is a bit strong, though. Mma Ramotswe (whose name is Precious, though you’ll seldom hear it) can teach us a lot about the ways of kindly souls and about the sort of real forgiveness that few of us can muster. She’s an acute observer of all around her, and like Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, her rural country setting never keeps her from spotting the many foibles displayed by her fellows and making important connections about human nature that serve her well.

Sometimes her refusal to judge can get in Mma Ramotswe’s way, even when she tries to hold back the tongue of her business assistant and close friend, Mma Makutsi (whose name is Grace, though it’s not often bandied about). Mma Makutsi’s wayward opinions, however, can sometimes be effectively quelled by the frequent cups of tea dispensed in the No. 1 office. And since everything at the agency proceeds on Botswana time—that is to say, at a steady but hardly rapid pace—there’s ample time to smooth over the wrinkles of human disagreement.

When Susan, a young Canadian woman, appeals for the agency’s help in uncovering pieces of her long-forgotten early childhood in Botswana, Mma Makutsi is quick to jump to conclusions about her motives, while Mma Ramotswe holds back judgment to read between the lines, piecing the reasons together from the woman’s unhappy past. The search for Susan’s old home is nicely punctuated with evocative portraits of the many people in Mma Ramotswe’s rich life: her husband, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni; her sometime assistants, Charlie and Mr. Polopetsi (he of the high-flying but often-plummeting schemes); and of course the outspoken Grace herself.

Readers seeking hair-trigger action thrills will wish to steer clear of the Ladies’ Detective Agency, where, fortunately for the rest of us, the literary payoff is in an entirely different coinage.

Homicide detective Max Rupert and lawyer Boady Sanden are longtime friends, but in Allen Eskens’ crime thriller The Heavens May Fall, they’re on opposite sides of the fence, with an ever-widening divide between them.

Max is a widower, still grieving his wife’s death four years earlier by a hit-and-run driver who was never apprehended. Boady hasn’t practiced law since the death of his last client, an innocent man who was deemed guilty even after Boady’s best legal efforts. These characters appear in Eskens’ previous work, The Life We Bury, and are more fully fleshed out in this novel.

On the anniversary of his own wife’s death, Max finds himself heading up the team assigned to the gruesome, perplexing murder of a woman who turns out to be Jennavieve Pruitt, the wife of Ben Pruitt, a prominent attorney, with whom Max has some bad history dating back to another case. Ben has an alibi for the night of his wife’s death, but it’s a leaky one and he needs a good attorney.

Boady, who was once Ben’s law partner, agrees to represent him, thus locking in an adversarial relationship between Max and Boady, one that will forever alter their friendship. Each man approaches the murder through the lens of his own personal loss, each trying to restore an invisible balance while drawing on darker, earlier moments in his life. Max’s vision may be obscured by a need for inner healing; Boady seeks reason and redemption from his past failures or omissions.

This tension-filled book explores the case from each man’s perspective—that of the detective who believes the victim’s husband is guilty of murder, and that of the attorney who believes that his client is innocent. The novel is occasionally clunky and overwrought in style, with a few unnecessarily gory details, but the author’s expert use of the modes of traditional crime fiction, combined with the legal proceedings and intriguing trial scenes, makes an effective combination that results in a fast-moving narrative.

The Heavens May Fall pretends to provide us with all the angles, giving readers a false sense of security, perhaps the illusion of transparency, only to cheat us at the end, as only good thrillers can, by throwing in some unexpected shocks and last-minute story twists.

An Obvious Fact, the 12th novel in Craig Johnson’s popular Longmire series, tries to throw a wrench in the works by moving the titular hero out of his natural element. But Walt Longmire is an element in himself, perfectly capable of functioning in any place and under any circumstance with his usual gruff, hard-fisted dedication to righting wrongs wherever he finds them.

In this case, Walt leaves his usual stomping grounds of Absaroka County, Wyoming, to solve a hit-and-run at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. It isn’t long before an undercover agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on the trail of a suspected gun-smuggling operation also ends up dead, increasing the scope of Walt’s investigation. Throw in a super-size military assault vehicle, rival motorcycle gangs and a plot to manufacture synthetic polymer weapons, and the stage is set for a thrilling climactic showdown in the shadow of the famous Devils Tower national monument.

That in itself would be enough to satisfy those looking for a fast-paced, action-packed read, but this is a Longmire novel, after all. As such, Johnson obligingly weaves in plenty of humorous banter, emotional bonding and deep characterization to bring his extended cast of Walt, Undersheriff Victoria Morettli and Henry Standing Bear to life. Henry, in fact, is a key focus of the book. At issue is his relationship to Lola, the real-life femme fatale and namesake for Henry’s ’59 Thunderbird, who is the possible mother of his son, the aforementioned hit-and-run victim.

An Obvious Fact is a welcome addition to the Longmire canon and one fans will anxiously wait to see adapted on the small screen.