Alexander McCall Smith. The Department of Sensitive Crimes. New York: Pantheon, 2019. Print.

Alexander McCall Smith, the author of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books among others and one of our favorite light writers, has apparently started a new series. Detective Ulf Varg leads a special unit of the Malmö, Sweden, police department called The Department of Sensitive Crimes. They investigate reported incidents that may or may not be caused by a criminal act, but with a potential for being more than a mere crank call.

A man at a trade show is stabbed in the back of the knee. It does not seem like an accident, but, let’s face it, that is an unusual place to be stabbed with a knife, especially when the victim is standing up at the time.

A young woman feels left out because her girlfriends all have boyfriends. In fact, her closest friend has two and manages to keep them both. So she makes up an imaginary boyfriend and actually gets a guy she meets in a coffee shop to pose for a selfie with her.

It gets a little more complicated as her friends keep wanting to meet this guy. Finally, she says that he is a meteorologist and has to do some work at a weather station above the Arctic Circle. Meanwhile her two-timing friend finds a bloody cloth in the girl’s car trunk and whose relative has been stationed in the same weather station and has never heard of the guy. So she reports that she suspects foul play to the police.

The death of an imaginary friend? There is more than meets the eye. Call in The Department of Sensitive Crimes.

Then the police commissioner himself asks Ulf, Anna, and Blomquist—the three Sensitive Crime police—to check out a resort run by the commissioner’s cousin. It seems there have been some unusual happenings going on around the inn. Customers are leaving after just a night or two and complaining the place is haunted. Could this be foul play by a competitor or something else?

The lighthearted and good-natured characters like those in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency stories are nearly duplicated here. Ulf Varg is a lot like Precious Ramotswe and the compulsive and boring Blomquist echoes Grace Makutsi. But here there are interesting and curious reflections on things Scandinavian. At one point we are told, for example, that Homer translates well into Swedish. He sounds like a Norse saga.

Ulf reflects on automobiles in a way reminiscent of J.L.B. Maketoni. Anna and Ulf seem to have a connection not unlike Mma Ramotswe and Bra Maketoni in the early Ladies’ Detective Agency novels, but Anna is married, and Swedes are stoics. If Grace Makutsi sometimes drones on about secretarial college, Blomquist has a single-minded obsession with fishing.

If this is the start of new series by Mr. Smith, it does have some promise. Some parts cause laughter, some parts are simply silly, and some are suspenseful fun. The detective agency formula he has developed still works here.