Edinburgh. Genteel home to ladies who lunch, attend concerts, art exhibitions and - for this is not a showy city - do good by stealth. Ladies such as Isabel Dalhousie.
But behind Edinburgh's regimented Georgian facades, its moral compasses are spinning with greed, dishonesty, lust and murderous intent. Isabel knows this. Isabel, in fact, rather relishes it.
The Sunday Philosophy Club, Alexander McCall Smith
As strange as it may seem for somebody who prefers the darker side of Crime Fiction, I don't mind the occasional dabble in The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency and I've rather enjoyed a few of McCall Smith's other series as well. Alas THE SUNDAY PHILOSOPHY CLUB didn't work for me at all.
I think to like this book you're going to have to like the protagonist Isabel Dalhousie, and unfortunately, she's the sort of character that makes me profoundly uncomfortable. There was something vaguely passive aggressive about all her actions, behaviours and attitudes that made my skin crawl slightly.
Of course it could be that part of what the author was aiming at was to make her a bit of a fish out of water, but somehow she just got up my nose. Which made the basic premise of the book very difficult to connect with. I kind of hoped at one point that the lovely ex-boyfriend of the perfect niece, he that Dalhousie obviously had a bit of crush on would turn out to be a maniacal serial killer with a massive problem with snooty older women and take to her with the stiffened spine of one of her philosophy treatise.
I may have lost perspective.
Doesn't mean I won't still dabble in the other books, particularly as I found myself left with a vague longing for PORTUGUESE IRREGULAR VERBS. Must go back and re-read that one over summer.