Hello Isabel Dalhousie. Will I like you as much as I think I will? I suspect so, given my first impression. My May prompt book, "something new" is the first in Alexander McCall Smith's Isabel Dalhousie mystery series, which comprises some dozen novels now. I thought for something "new" it would be a good time to get to know a new sleuth seeing as I have piles of mysteries waiting for attention. I can't tell you how many times I have picked up this first mystery, The Sunday Philosophy Club, published in 2004 and set in Edinburgh, Scotland.
I find the NYT blurb that is on the back cover quite appealing: "the literary equivalent of herbal tea and a cozy fire." Sounds just up my alley as does the idea of Isabel's "meditations on a variety of moral questions," because she studied philosophy you know. Sometimes the mystery is almost besides the point--in this case in the opening pages of the story a young man falls from "the gods", which surely must mean the upper tier of the concert hall, Usher Hall, where she was attending a symphony production. The concert had just finished and people were exiting when he toppled over the parapet.
But let's put Isabel into her environment. For me a good part of the enjoyment of a (especially long standing) mystery series is getting to know the sleuth and her world--where she lives, her family and friends, her personality and little quirks and idiosyncrasies. It's all interesting to me and I like when the story builds over time (which is why I love Kinsey Millhone so much) and the characters and setting becomes richer the further in you get. I've only read a few chapters so far, but this is what I know about Isabel so far:
She lives in Edinburgh. She is single but Grace, her housekeeper, comes daily. I think Grace is going to be quite the character as she has very decided opinions and is not afraid to share them. Isabel has a niece who owns a cafe and is in her twenties. Cat, the niece, has poor taste in men according to Isabel. As a matter of fact her latest beau is not a favorite of Isabel's, though she tries to keep her opinions to herself. Isabel is somewhere in her mid-40s and has less luck with men. The one love she had left her when they were in America. Likely he is still there and probably has moved on to yet some other woman by now. She would probably take him back if he were to return, she was that smitten by him, but as he is unlikely to do so, I guess she is "safe". Her father is Scottish, but he married an American woman when he was living there. As yet I am not entirely clear on that part of her family.
The Sunday Philosophy Club does exist, but as yet I have not seen the group in action. Isabel works as an editor of a philosophy journal, but it is her internal thoughts that have made me like her all the more. She was reflecting on that old lover . . .
"It might be simpler, she reflected, not to allow oneself to be in love with anybody; just to be oneself, immune to hurt from others. There were plenty of people like that who seemed content with their lives--or were they? She wondered how many of these people were solitary by choice , and how many were alone because nobody had ever come into their lives and relieved them of their loneliness. There was a difference between resignation, or acceptance in the face of loneliness and choosing to be solitary."
That is a tricky situation, and sometimes you just must make the best of things. I wonder on which side of the question she herself will fall. I have a feeling Isabel is going to be a kindred spirit. And how is she going to be involved in the mystery and the solving of it. Perhaps she is going to be one of my great finds of the year. And it feels good to pick up a new, though long on my TBR mystery.