‘A Distant View of Everything (Isabel Dalhousie # 11) and The Quiet Side of Passion (Isabel Dalhousie # 12)’ by Alexander McCall Smith

With the addition of a new baby brother for Charlie, Isabel struggles with the common sorts of post-partum challenges like slight depression and sibling rivalry. Her life is happy and fulfilling enough, but Isabel still suffers from her usual weakness of getting herself embroiled in other people’s lives. She views this as a compelling urge towards helpfulness, but when does involvement become meddling and when is it time to mind your own business?

When the daily demands of work, children, and keeping the household become overwhelming, Isabel decides to employ both an assistant to help her edit the philosophical journal as well as an au pair to help around the house. She imagines her burdens being magically lifted, but of course, the additional staff cause an additional set of problems. Isabel finds herself embroiled in a number of dangerous situations with some rather unsavoury characters. I was finding that Smith’s writing in the last few years was becoming a bit less compelling, so I was pleasantly surprised that there was quite a bit more adventure in both of these.

The philosophical musing that Smith likes to do is inherent in this series especially because Isabel Dalhousie is an editor for a philosophical journal. As is true for many philosophers, her mind tends to wander when she thinks about the ways of human life and grapples with everyday moral and ethical questions.  So is this the end for this series? We’ll have to wait and see. He has started a new series which is coming out this month called The Detective Varg Series set in Sweden which is more “Sandinavian Blanc” rather than Scandinavian Noir–featuring very odd, but not very threatening crimes. Sandy Smith is such a prolific writer, I always joke that he writes them faster than I can read them! See his website for a complete listing of all of his series. It’s like a big bag of chips–once you start, you won’t be able to stop!