The lost art of gratitude

Review by Booklist Review

In the sixth installment of McCall Smith's engaging series, Scottish moral philosopher Isabel Dalhousie dotes on her 18-month-old child, Charlie, and addresses some very adult issues, too. The most pressing among them is the pedantic and oh-so-annoying Professor Christopher Dove, who has accused Isabel of plagiarism. (The charge is completely unfounded, and as Isabel's sleuthing suggests, Professor Dove may have committed some academic sins of his own.) Then there's prickly financier Minty Auchterlonie, who speaks to Isabel about a very personal matter but can she be trusted? On the domestic front, Isabel's niece has a new boyfriend, a stuntman whose voice is as tightly wound as the tightrope he walks. Jamie, Isabel's much younger lover and the father of Charlie, has a very important question for Isabel. And Charlie says his first word. (Hint: it's a cocktail garnish.) Whether she's pondering a deep philosophical conundrum or helping a friend in need, charming Isabel always has the best intentions, even if she sometimes seems to be interfering. You can't help yourself, says a neighbor and confidant. Luckily for readers, Isabel seems destined to meddle indefinitely. If McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency entries are his love letter to Botswana, the Scotland-based series is a paean to his home of Edinburgh, an eclectic metropolis brimming with history, mystery, and life.--Block, Allison Copyright 2009 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Smith's quietly triumphant sixth novel to feature Scottish philosopher Isabel Dalhousie (after 2008's The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday) shows that Isabel and the author's other, better-known female sleuth-Precious Ramotswe of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series-are sisters under the skin, despite obvious differences. Minty Auchterlonie, who once alerted Isabel to some insider trading, fears someone is out to get her. The tax authorities have suddenly investigated Minty, and an unknown party has sent her a funeral wreath. When Isabel looks into these provocative acts, she draws on lessons learned from the journal she edits, the Review of Applied Ethics, to arrive at the complex truth behind them. Meanwhile, the father of Isabel's young son proposes marriage, and a defeated academic rival accuses her of knowingly publishing plagiarism. Smith's trademark humor and telling observations about people heighten the appeal. (Sept. 22) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

No. 6 in the "Sunday Philosophy Club" series; Davina Porter reads. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Inspired and encouraged by verses from W.H. Auden, Edinburgh philosopher Isabel Dalhousie again confronts wickedness masquerading as mere crime. A child's birthday party is an unusual spot to get a new case, but that's where high-flying investment banker Minty Auchterlonie asks Isabel to meet with Jock Dundas, who's threatening to reveal their (now-ended) extramarital affair to her husband, Gordon McCaig, unless Minty gives Jock access to the son Gordon assumes is his. It's a delicate mission, but no more delicate than the other tasks on Isabel's plate. Her old nemesis Prof. Christopher Dove accuses her of condoning plagiarism as editor of the Journal of Applied Ethics. Her niece Cat, a deli owner who's never quite gotten over Isabel's continuing liaison with her former lover Jamie, the father of Isabel's son Charlie, announces her engagement to Bruno, a tightrope walker and stunt man who seems utterly unsuitable. Jamie proposes marriage to Isabel, propelling her into a state of bliss that's punctured only when her housekeeper expresses relief that now she can stop living in sin. And Isabel has to decide what to do about a neighborhood fox she's been feeding when he turns up wounded but won't let her touch him. As usual in this wise and literate series (The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday, 2008, etc.), nothing much happens. Yet readers as sensitive as Isabel will turn the last page feeling that they've been through quite a bit, from a confrontation with monstrous evil to another round of struggles to help creatures in need. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter One IT WAS WHILE she was lying in bed that Isabel Dalhousie, philosopher and editor of the Review of Applied Ethics, thought about the things we do. Isabel was a light sleeper; Charlie, her eighteen-month-old son, slept deeply and, she was sure, contentedly; Jamie was somewhere in between. Yet Isabel had little difficulty in getting to sleep. Once she made up her mind to sleep, all that she had to do was to shut her eyes and, sure enough, she would drift off. The same could be done if she surfaced in the course of the night or in those melancholy small hours when both body and spirit could be at their lowest ebb. Then all she had to do was to tell herself that this was not the time to start thinking, and she would quickly return to sleep. She had wondered about the causes of her light sleeping and had spoken about it to a friend, a specialist in sleep disorders. She had not consulted him professionally, but had brought the matter up over dinner; not before the whole table, of course, but in the intimacy of the one-to-one conversation that people have with those sitting beside them. "I don't like to ask about medical things," she said. "But . . . ," he said. "Well, yes. But. You see, you doctors must dread being buttonholed by people who want to talk about their symptoms. There you are at a party and somebody says: I've been having these twinges of pain in my stomach . . ." "Have you?" "No, I haven't." He smiled. "The old cliché, you know. Somebody comes and says, A friend of mine has this rash, you see, and I wondered what it was. That sometimes happens. Doctors understand all about embarrassment, you know." Isabel nodded. "But it must annoy you--being asked about medical matters." He thought for a moment. " Nihil humanum mihi alienum est , if I may lapse into Latin. I don't set my mind against anything human. Doctors should subscribe to that, I think. Like priests." Isabel did not think the comparison quite fitting. "Priests do disapprove, don't they? Doctors don't--or shouldn't. You don't shake your head over your patients' behaviour, do you?" "If doctors see self-destructive behaviour, they might," he said. "If somebody comes in with chronic vascular disease, for example, and you smell the nicotine on his fingers, of course you're going to say something. Or a drinker comes in with liver problems. You're going to make it clear what's causing the problem." "But you don't ladle on the blame, do you? You don't say things like, This is all your own stupid fault. You don't say that, even if it patently is his stupid fault." He played with his fork. "No, I suppose not." "Whereas a priest will. A priest will use the language of right and wrong. I don't think doctors do that." She looked at him. He was typical of a certain type of Edinburgh doctor; the old-fashioned, gentle Scottish physician, unmoved by the considerations of profit and personal gain that could so disfigure medicine. That doctors should consider themselves businessmen was, Isabel had always felt, a moral tragedy for medicine. Who was left to be altruistic? Teachers, she thought, and people who worked for charities; and public-interest lawyers, and . . . in fact, the list was quite long; probably every bit as long as it ever had been. One should be careful, she told herself, in commenting on the decline of society; the elder Cato was the warning here--a frightful old prig, he had warned that everything was in decline, forgetting that once we reach forty we all believe that the world is on the slide. Only if eighteen-year-olds started to say O tempora! O mores ! would the situation be really alarming; eighteen-year-olds did not say that, though; they no longer had any Latin, of course, and could not. "You were going to ask me a question," he said. He knew Isabel, and her digressions, her tendency to bring philosop Excerpted from The Lost Art of Gratitude by Alexander McCall Smith All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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