2008-06-22 A delightful read

I'm not keen on McCall Smith's Ladies Detective Agency series, but found this a charming and enjoyable book. If I hadn't known that the author was male I would have guessed that the book was written by a woman as it is so insightful into women's attitudes and feelings about relationships. His heroine, Isabel Dalhousie, is a delightful character and her quest for truth is admirable. There's an engaging amateur detective story that carries the book along. The author's background expertise includes philosophy and he enriches the book, through Isabel's professional and private musings, to raise various moral and philosophical issues. If you know Edinburgh well, all the allusions to streets and shops add a warm sense of familiarity and reality to the book.