The Sunday Philosophy Club: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel (Isabel Dalhousie Novels) [Paperback]

I've only recently sampled this McCall Smith series having found the Number 1 Ladies Detective Series too twee for my tastes. The heroine of the Philosophy Club series, Isabel Dalhousie, is a charming and interesting character who engages the reader to care about what happens in her life. The story-lines have several strands: her personal life; her amateur sleuthing; and her occupation as an editor of a philosophy journal. This last theme allows the author to explore aspects of moral philosophy and ethics (his own professional background). In the past I've tended to find writings about philosophy tedious, but the way the author incorporates philosophical issues into the fabric of these stories makes the ideas come alive. For those of us who know Edinburgh, reading about all the familiar streets and shops gives added pleasure. This is not a book based on realistic crime detection, such as Ian Rankin's Rebus series: it's more in the Simon Brett/ Agatha Christie camp.

The Sunday Philosophy Club is the beginning of a new series featuring the middle-aged and single Isabel Dalhousie. I'm going to confess right from the start that I did not take to Isabel as a character. In part, this is because I found that she rather stretched belief. She's an independently wealthy, middle-aged woman (who married the love of her life, only to be left by him) who has retained her looks but who isn't pursuing a relationship and who also happens to be a philosopher. I don't doubt that there are women like this in real life, but it is an awful lot to take in in what's actually quite a short book (coming in at just under 300 pages) and I did think that McCall Smith leveraged in the backstory with her lover John Liamor a little too obviously. Given that this is to be a series, I think that some of the backstory could have been alluded to so as to give the reader the idea that there's more to come before being drawn out in later novels. As it is, I'm not sure that there's enough left to discover about Isabel that would keep me reading.

It's a shame that I didn't take to Isabel given that the book is really about her and her thoughts on modern day society. In fact, I thought that the summary on the back of the book was a little misleading because whilst the novel does begin with a death (which I thought was conveyed in a really believable manner, complete with a lovely touch about how the victim's shirt has risen up as he falls to expose his midrift), Isabel's investigations are really almost an afterthought - a thin skeleton on which to hang the characterisation.

McCall Smith focuses the bulk of the book's attention on Isabel's relationship with Jamie (a young man who previously went out with her niece and who she has hopes will become a nephew-in-law) and with Cat, her niece who is currently dating an unsuitable man called Toby. Again, neither Jamie or Cat convinced me as characters as both are essentially sounding boards for different aspects of Isabel's personality: Jamie represents a sounding board for her ideas on what is desirable in a man (given that she admits to having an attraction to him) and Cat a sounding board for the importance on settling down with the right man. Toby barely gets a look in beyond the dismissed suitor and in fact, the way that McCall Smith dispatches him via the highly contrived discovery of infidelity was a little disappointing. In addition, whilst I could understand the basis of Cat's relationship with Isabel, I couldn't quite buy into why Jamie would want to spend so much time with her - the attraction aspect on his part is not wholly convincing and by offering a rationale his wish to stay close in some way to Cat (given that he hopes for a second chance) makes him seem a little pathetic and weak.

I did however enjoy the relationship (platonic) between Isabel and her housekeeper Grace. Grace with her superstitions and ability to nail a character felt very real to me and whilst she's relegated to a role of reinforcing Isabel's confidence and listening to those problems she can't share with Jamie or Cat there's a lot of scope for development there.

I do want to say that whilst I found this book disappointing, it is nevertheless a pleasant read and I found the segments looking at issues of moral philosophy to be interesting and easily understandable (albeit it again, sometimes leveraged into the story) and it's good to see a writer who is not afraid to run concepts and ideas by his readers just to make them think about what they would do or how they feel about something. There is at the same time though, a curiously old-fashioned feel to this book - more one for Agatha Christie fans I think than for fans of modern thriller writers (which are more urgently plot driven affairs). Oh - and you won't see any meetings of the titular Club - it's more a teasing device to pique your interest.

Mma Ramotswe was always going to be a hard act to follow and, wisely, Alexander McCall Smith has set his new series as far away from Botwana as possible. I anticipated that his new heroine would share some of Precious Ramotswe's intuitive understanding of human nature. However, Isabel Dalhousie is an academic - a philosopher, much give to musing over the dicta of Hume, Kant et al. Quite hard for the ordinary reader to relate to. She's a very privileged woman, even by the standards of Morningside (the 'posh' part of Edinburgh) where ladies who lunch lurk behind the net curtains and no-one would be seen dead sending their kids to a state school! The world of academe, the law and high finance is a far cry from the dusty streets of Gaborone - so why did this Scots reviewer feel so much less at home in the Scottish capital?

The characters seem to me to lack warmth (mind you, so does Edinburgh) and his ear for dialogue seems to have deserted the author, even in Isabel's exchanges with her beloved niece, Cat. Even in Edinburgh, surely they don't use the impersonal 'one' all the time! There is quite a lot of interior monologue with the heroine mulling over the situation and thinking about her past (not all past) love of a husband long gone to California. The one character who, I thought, had the potential for development and more humorous treatment, is Grace, Isabel's housekeeper, devoted to her employer and to Cat, but never mincing words or shrinking from expressing an opinion - also a severe critic of Edinburgh's public transport!

In short, I was disappointed with this novel because I couldn't relate to the characters, nor could I get excited by the plot which wended a rather wearisome way through the novel and was occasionally lost sight of completely while Isabel interfered with her niece's love life.