Pinkerton (detective agency) nationally publicized trial. Orchard received a death sentence, but it was commuted. In 1890, Indiana University hired the Pinkerton Agency to investigate the authorship of a student "bogus" that had been distributed throughout town. While boguses were not uncommon, this particular one attacked IU faculty and students with such graphic language that Bloomington residents complained. The detective arrived in Bloomington on April 26 and spent nearly two weeks conducting interviews and dispatching regular reports back to the home office. In the end, it was town talk that led to the student authors and not the work of the agent. The
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (novel) solves three cases, and meets important new people, her secretary Grace Makutsi and good friend, the excellent mechanic, Mr JLB Matekoni. The novel was first published in Scotland, where it gained a following. After two more novels in the series were published, all three were published in the US to much acclaim; in 2002, for example, Publishers' Weekly called it a "little gem of a book". The series did not catch on in England, despite being so close to Scotland, until the fifth novel in the series. Mma Ramotswe sits in her office, the Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency. She