It's the little things that matter most to Alexander McCall Smith, best-selling author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series.

"I believe in the great possibilities in the small events of everyday life. . . . The little rituals of this life - having tea with another person, these social niceties - are actually the cement in our lives. These little concerns are what life is about and what brings us together."

None of this would come as a surprise to his growing legion of fans. His novels are full of his insightful but gentle examinations of human nature and the communities he knows best.

McCall Smith is best- known for his No. 1 series, featuring the charming Precious Ramotswe. The irrepressible and eternally optimistic detective first set up shop, in Book One, at the foot of Kgale Hill in Botswana with little more than a tiny white van, a telephone and her able assistant, Mma Makutsi.

She's been solving mysteries in her considerate manner for six books now, each met with wider acclaim than the last.

Turns out, good things come in simple packages.

"These are tea-and-cake novels, really," McCall Smith says with joyous laughter that carries all the way from Melbourne, Australia, where the author is touring. His travels bring him to Denver on Wednesday, when he'll appear as a guest lecturer in the Post-News Pen & Podium author series.

McCall Smith has recently branched out with 44 Scotland Street, a novel that revolves around the lives of the residents of an Edinburgh boarding house, and a new series, The Sunday Philosophy Club, in which Scottish philosopher Isabel Jalousie wrestles with moral dilemmas both personal and universal - over tea, of course.

He came to writing after a full career in law. Born in Zimbabwe in 1948, McCall Smith left Africa at 18 to study at the University of Edinburgh, where he became a professor of medical law. In the mid-1980s, he returned to help establish the law school at the University of Botswana. There he was inspired by a frenetic encounter between a Botswanan woman and the chicken she was chasing.

"I suppose I was trying to get those qualities that I glimpsed down on paper," McCall Smith recalls. "She had this terrific smile that just made me think that here was a great character. They were qualities that one would see in many people in that particular country, and visitors are often struck by it. You meet people in fairly casual circumstances, and you are struck by the human decency that shines through."

Fifteen years later, Precious Ramotswe emerged in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. The book has generated the interest of Hollywood, where Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack have bought the film rights to Mma Ramotswe's adventures. The most recent book, In the Company of Cheerful Ladies, follows the resourceful detective through more tricky but mostly modest mysteries.

"I'm concerned with giving people some time with interesting characters with a little bit of excitement along the way - but not too much," her creator says. "I don't want to keep my readers up late at night."

McCall Smith's affectionate depiction of Botswana has boosted the image of both country and continent, but his impressions often clash with media reports. While he acknowledges its humanitarian crises, he pleads the case for a fuller portrayal of Africa.

"These are really fine people with a good culture behind them," he says. "Sub-Saharan African countries are not just the problematic places that the media presents. The full picture of Africa includes very decent people living very good lives with great generosity of spirit."

Friends, Lovers, Chocolate, his newest addition to the Sunday Philosophy Club series, paints an equally rich portrait of Edinburgh, where McCall Smith lives with his wife, Elizabeth, and daughters Lucy and Emily, just two doors down from where crime writer Ian Rankin plies a grittier version of the city. The city is where Isabel Dalhousie divides her time between editing her Review of Applied Ethics and clumsily tackling mysteries of the heart with her considerable brainpower.

"Each of the words has some philosophical resonance," he says of the title. "Isabel is a philosopher, and friendship involves philosophical issues. Lovers can certainly give rise to moral difficulties. Chocolate, meanwhile, represents a thorny moral issue for all of us. It represents temptation and our inability to resist temptation."

His flinty philosopher also lets McCall Smith survey not only what makes people tick but his larger questions about how we live.

"I do find that having a character such as Isabel, with her interest in applied ethics - I am able to explore all sorts of odd issues that interest me," he says.

"I think most of us are interested in the fundamental question of how we can lead a good and satisfying life. I think that daily life is composed of all sorts of little challenges about what to do and how to deal with other people. I think it's quite an exciting matter how we react to these situations, and I think it's interesting to examine them in a fictional context."

While imagining the world from the point of view of two distinctly different women would be daunting to most, McCall Smith says it comes naturally.

"I think one can train oneself to see the world through other eyes," he says. "Mma Ramotswe is obviously much more intuitive and very often gets things right, where Isabel Dalhousie approaches things in a much more structured, questioning way and often gets things wrong."

Next up for the prolific writer is the eighth Ramotswe book, Blue Shoes and Happiness, which he plans to finish this month. He also plans a new children's book, two sequels to 44 Scotland Street and a third book about Isabel Dalhousie.

He also will continue in his formidable sideline as a bassoonist in the Really Terrible Orchestra, a realensemble with a cameo in The Sunday Philosophy Club.

It took him some time to reach this acclaim, but McCall Smith feels fortunate for the timing.

"I think that it's probably a good thing that these things have happened later in my life," he says. "I can imagine if you were much younger, one's head could be turned."

If you go

• What: Alexander McCall Smith appears at the Post-News Pen & Podium Series.

• When and where: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Newman Center, 2344 E. Iliff Ave.

• Cost: $33-$48

• Information: 303-871-7720 (option 2) or www.penandpodium.com.

McCall Smith is part of a yearlong celebration of authors. Others appearing in the Pen & Podium Series:

• Suzan-Lori Parks (Getting Mother's Body), Nov. 14;

• Michael Cunningham (The Hours, Specimen Days), Feb. 20;

• Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones), March 21;

• David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim), May 1.

Events are sold as a subscription package. Call 303-871-7720 (option 2) or www.penandpodium.com

Clayton Moore is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Atomic Magazine, Dirty Linen, Bookslut and About.com. He lives south of Denver.

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