With his characteristic warmth, inventiveness and brilliant wit, Alexander McCall Smith gives us more of the gloriously entertaining comings and goings at 44 Scotland Street, the Edinburgh townhouse.

Six-year-old prodigy Bertie perseveres in his heroic struggle for truth and balanced good sense against his insufferable mother and her crony, the psychotherapist Dr Fairbairn, going as far as to make a short-lived bid for freedom on a trip to Paris with the Edinburgh youth orchestra. Domenica sets off on an anthropological odyssey with pirates in the Malacca Straits, while Pat attracts several handsome admirers, including a toothsome suitor named Wolf. And Big Lou, eternal source of coffee and good advice to her friends, has love, heartbreak and erstwhile boyfriend Eddie's misdemeanours on her own mind.

For the winner of the Pamper Yourself raffle prize. Enjoy!

I've read The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency -books from McCall Smith. It's interesting to read other books too. Thank you!

Releasing this to the book buffet

I picked up several lighter (in weight) books at the Bookcrossing Convention; some for reading and others for release. Thank you.

It's an old fashioned story that appears to be written from a bi-gone era, or by someone who still wants a bi-gone era. Letter writing, when today it's usually email or texted in some way; a shared phone in group accommodation (who has a shared phone in the era of mobile phones?). It reminds me of when I lived in group accommodation in the 1970s. We had a shared phone then, but if it were today, we wouldn't even have a land line connected, as we would each have our mobile phones. The characters' names hark back even further to my mother's generation; to the 1930s. The characters read as MUCH older than they supposedly are, which made it more difficult to imagine them.
An okay read, but for the first part of the book I found it a bit of a chore. However, by the end I had warmed to the story and enjoyed it and was sorry when I read the last page.
Bertie is an unlikeable child. Their teacher gets a class of six year olds to play in the Sound of Music. Some of them can't even read yet, although they are portrayed as MUCH older by their comments; at least ten years older. Is the author being sarcastic? Is this a comment on Steiner Schools?

Left beside an opening in the fence, Coldham's Common, Cambridge, UK. N52° 12.237 E0° 09.461

If you take this book the previous readers would really appreciate if you could please log your find. That way we can all follow the book's journey. Bookcrossing is spam free and your details are private, or you can log the find anonymously. Thank you and enjoy the read.




To the finder, enjoy, and I hope you will write a journal entry so that previous readers will know that this book has been found (even anonymously). It is always a joy to find where it has gone. Once you've read this book, pass it on to a friend, or set it out "in the wild" for someone else to find as you did.
You can remain anonymous but if you are interested in joining please consider using - Goldenwattle as your referrer.
When you pass this book along, please make a release note to let others know where you left it. Thank you.
More information on BookCrossing

i found it a few years ago in Coldhams common shamefully it sat on my shelf for a few years! lets hope it finds a more responsible owner..