The Sunday Philosophy Club
An Isabel Dalhousie Mystery
About the book
Set in Edinburgh, Alexander McCall Smith's 2004 novel opens the Sunday Philosophy Club series and introduces Isabel Dalhousie, a philosopher in her early forties who edits the Review of Applied Ethics and lives alone in a large old house in the south of the city. Isabel sometimes takes up problems that are none of her business. When a young man falls to his death from the upper circle before her eyes, the look on his face makes her doubt the police verdict of suicide. Against the advice of her housekeeper Grace and her niece Cat, whose boyfriend she disapproves of, she sets out to learn what happened. The original title was The Crushed Strawberry.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb said he picked it up because of its title and cautioned in his Amazon review that readers interested only in mysteries may not take to it.
We hope you love the books people recommend! Just so you know, The CEO Library may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page.
This book has 1 recommendation
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Flaneur)
If your interests are limited to mystery books, nothing else, this book is not for you.
I initially bought this book because of the title, thinking that we would have a female version of Her Professor Dr Dr (Hon.) Moritz-Maria von Igenfeld, the Pninish uberscholar philologist who wrote the seminal Portugese Irregular Verbs ("after which there was nothing left to discuss about the subject, Nothing."). I was curious to see how he would present a female version of such scholar. He did not.
Nor was it a detective story, although there is an element of suspense. This book is about Applied Ethics, a subject about which the author seems to know a bit. It also makes you feel like leading a quite thinking life in Edinburgh.
I don't want to spoil the story but I felt that I was reading a detective story until I realized what it was...
Get this book on Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books