It’s enjoyable enough, a bit of amateur sleuthing undertaken and resolved without me guessing whodunit or why, and paced well. This series is the third of his that I’ve road tested, and it combines the woman-on-a-mission dynamic of his Ladies’ Detective Agency with the Scotland-is-a-cultural-paradise dynamic of 44 Scotland Street. You tend to know what to expect with this author: a simple, uncluttered writing style and a lot of laid-back reflection on life’s big questions. I might not actively seek out the other books in the series, but I'd not steer clear either. There's also a smidge too much philosophy for my tastes, but it's a reasonable read. In several instances she leaps to an unwarranted conclusion, one of which has her in danger. She's in the Miss Marple style, trying to draw conclusions based on her knowledge of human nature, but she's not necessarily as good at this as she seems to think.

She soon becomes convinced that the answer lies in some murky financial dealings, but how to prove it. She's at a concert at the Usher hall when she sees a man fall from the gods, but did he fall, or was he pushed? She has no need to get involved, but she does, starting to ask questions about how he came to fall over the barrier, was it an accident, suicide or murder. All of which means she has a tendency to get involved in other people's lives. Isabel Dalhousie is a middle aged spinster in Edinburgh, a philosopher with some time on her hands and a niece called Cat (who is with the wrong man).

The sunday philosophy club review