Chris Watt
Alexander McCall Smith speaks at 7:30 tonight in Carnegie Music Hall, Oakland. Tickets: 412-622-8866.
Click photo for larger image.

From Botswana to his home of Edinburgh, Alexander McCall Smith believes in staying on the main roads.

"My readers like finding the same character book after book," said the author of the series, "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency," "Portuguese Irregular Verbs" and "The Sunday Philosophy Club."

Another series, "44 Scotland Street," is serialized in The Scotsman, an Edinburgh daily. The first installment in book form was published earlier this year.

He comes into town tonight for the Heinz Lectures at the Carnegie Music Hall to speak on the topic, "How I Became a Serial Novelist."

Like a well-worn sweater, a series novel is comfortable, said Smith. "You feel you've come to know the characters, that they're old friends."

In Smith's case, the formula of familiarity works well. There are now about 10 million copies of the six "No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency" books in print.

He spent a year teaching in Botswana, the home of Precious Ramotswe, his sleuthing heroine, in 1981, but is a longtime resident of Scotland's capital where he taught medical law at Edinburgh University, retiring after 30 years in the post.

Smith has also been a visiting professor at universities in America and Europe and served on a United Nations' panel on bioethics. The writing career simply took over his time, he said, so he now does it full time.

"I had always written in my spare time -- children's books, short stories, then the novels. When they rather took off, the writing simply became too time-consuming."

His series of series consists mostly of clever mysteries of the nonviolent kind.

"While you might put them in the mystery genre, the books are bit odd because they are not really crime novels," Smith said, but he's not complaining.

"The genre offers a writer a wide latitude because you can really explore both the place and the characters," he said.

"They require a strong setting. That's very important. And you need strong, memorable characters. It's a great challenge."

Smith lives in a kind of writers' colony in Edinburgh where his neighbors are Ian Rankin, a best-selling crime novelist, and an up-and-coming children's author named J.K. Rowling.

"She lives right around the corner, but I don't see as much of her as I do of Rankin, who lives two doors down," Smith said.

Although born 57 years ago in Africa in what is now Zimbabwe, Smith is as Scottish as heather and says he looks forward to being a guest in the building named for another famous Scot.

"It's a wonderful connection for me. Andrew Carnegie was a great man and Scotland is dotted with libraries he started. I look forward to it very much."

First Published: November 7, 2005, 5:00 a.m.