Charmed, I'm sure

Last week I succumbed to the first of the Isabel Dalhousie novels by the too charming for his own good Alexander McCall Smith.

I've resisted for a long time because I found his Precious Ramotswe series (beginning with The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency) addictive, expensive and sadly, ultimately unsatisfying. Precious is convincing heroine (a "traditionally built lady") in an exotic African city trying to make her way in a man's world as a detective. The sleuthing is incidental to stories about tales of life in Botswana told with what seems to be real affection. But I found the tales themselves got slighter and slighter with each adventure and I was spending what seemed like a lot of money on books I was reading in a couple of hours. (I know, I know, that's what libraries are for. But these were such PRETTY books that I wanted to own them. One (Tears of a Giraffe?) even had a picture of my favourite animal on the cover.) So I stopped reading them, probably at about the same time as two other McCall Smith series turned up in Australia. (The man is a publishing phenomenon and deservedly so. Apparently he doesn't get writer's block. He just sits down and writes and then stops when he thinks it's done and his editor puts a cover on and releases another best seller to the world.)

Anyway, The Sunday Philosophy Club is also very charming. It's a love letter to Edinburgh (where I've never been). Its heroine, Isabel Dalhousie is an independently wealthy editor of a philosopy journal. This means there are plenty of opportunities for her to bring profound philosophical thoughts to events as well as heaps of time for her to take us on a tour of the city. (Unlike real academics who are too overworked and real people of inherited wealth who would be more likely to hang around with the jetset.)

Once again, the sleuthing isn't that important and I was a bit disappointed in the resolution of the mystery. But now I really really want to go to Edinburgh, in summer anyway.