Alexander McCall Smith's latest is The Dog Who Came in from the Cold, the second installment in the Corduroy Mansions series. What I like best about the books of Alexander McCall Smith including The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, The Isabel Dalhousie series, The 44 Scotland Street series, and now The Corduroy Mansions series is the characterizations. Each of his characters is unique from all the others, and each has a quirk of humanity that all readers can recognize. The stories are positive and optimistic without being sickeningly sweet. Even though two of the series Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency and Isabel Dalhousie usually have a mystery at their center, sometimes an actual crime but otherwise mysteries of human behavior they are not frightening or graphic. Even the series that are not overtly mysteries certainly spend some time presenting human behaviors for our edification, to make us think about our own lives. I keep waiting in a pessimistic reader way for one of the books to sour me on AMS, but so far I like all that I read.
The Dog Who Came in From the Cold continues the story of those who live in and around the Corduroy Mansions block in Pimlico in London. (Incidentally, all of McCall's books make me want to move to their location be it Botswana, Edinburgh, or London.) There is literary agent Barbara Ragg and her new love Hugo, as well as her business partner Rupert Porter; psychotherapist Berthea Snark and her gullible brother Terence Moongrove and peripherally her son the snarky Oedipus Snark; the young art students Caroline and James who may or may not be a couple; and perhaps most significant in this book, William and his Pimlico terrier Freddie de lay Hay who is conscripted to work for MI6. It is not a comedy but there are funny parts, it is not a romance, but there are love stories, it is not a drama, but there is plenty of drama. The book is unlabel-able, but wonderful.
