But whereas Precious's no-nonsense commonsense is attractive, Isabel's privileged lifestyle jars hideously and puts her way out of touch with real life. Separated by continent and culture, they are, nevertheless, two mature women with an able female sidekick and a code to live their lives by. Isabel is very much like Mma Ramotswe, star of THE NO. Her pleasant lifestyle is disturbed, though, when, during a night out at a concert, she witnesses a young man falling from the top balcony. Isabel Dalhousie is a 40-something woman of independent means who lives in a large Edinburgh house with an housekeeper to look after her, and who spends her time editing a philosophical journal and being seen at all the right parties and exhibitions. THE SUNDAY PHILOSOPHY CLUB is really very civilised, as you might therefore expect. He took some pot-shots not so long ago at the likes of fellow Scottish writers Irvine Welsh - basically for writing about nasty things like drugs and for cussing a lot. McCall Smith, the university academic-turned-crime fiction sensation, seems to be starting a single-handed campaign to bring niceness back into writing.
The Sunday Philosophy Club is the first book in the series, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.If you like Alexander McCall Smith's Botswana series, you will no doubt lap this book up, and if you are a fan of the likes of Mo Hayder, don't even go there. But then Isabel, being a philosopher, has a thing or two to say about God as well. As her hero WH Auden maintained, classic detective fiction stems from a desire for an uncorrupted Eden which the detective, as an agent of God, can return to us. With Isabel Dalhousie Alexander McCall Smith introduces a New and pneumatic female sleuth to tackle murder, mayhem - and the mysteries of life. Instinct tells Isabel that the young man who tumbled to his death in front of her eyes at a concert in the Usher Hall didn't fall. Behind the city's Georgian facades its moral compasses are spinning with greed, dishonesty and murderous intent. Isabel is Editor of the Review of Applied Ethics - which addresses such questions as 'Truth telling in sexual relationships' - and she also hosts The Sunday Philosophy Club at her house in Edinburgh. THE FIRST INSTALLMENT OF THE MUCH-LOVED ISABEL DALHOUSIE SERIESĪmateur sleuth Isabel Dalhousie is a philosopher who also uses her training to solve unusual mysteries.
0 kommentar(er)
