The Novel Habits of Happiness - Alexander McCall Smith

Isabel Dalhousie is a philosopher. She lives in Edinburgh, she's wealthy (she bought the applied ethics journal she edits when it was under attack from rivals), married to Jamie & the mother of three year old Charlie. All these advantages worry Isabel, even though she is philanthropic, kind & always ready to help anyone in need, especially when their problem has a moral or ethical dimension. Isabel's relationship with her niece, Cat, is another source of worry. Cat is not much younger than Isabel & was once involved with Jamie. This hasn't helped their relationship & Cat, who is a prickly woman, takes offence very easily while also presuming on Isabel's good nature when she needs help. Cat also had terrible taste in men & has just gone off to Paris for a weekend with the latest man, leaving Isabel to help out in her delicatessen at short notice. Isabel's social prejudices are on show when Eddie tells her that Cat's new boyfriend is a dishwasher repairman & is then surprised by his knowledge of art & poetry. She also has to adjust her ideas about a colleague, Professor Robert Lettuce, who has made her professional life very difficult. She discovers that Lettuce is in line for a senior post at the Enlightenment Institute at the University of Edinburgh which disconcerts her. However, after meeting Lettuce's wife, Clementine, & finding out a little more about the man & his motivations, she has to reassess her instinctive dislike of a man she has considered a personal enemy.

When a friend of Isabel's asks her help for a neighbour, Isabel agrees to meet the woman, Kirsten, who's concerned about her son. Seven year old Harry has begun talking about another life, his "other family", & his mother is worried about his mental stability. Kirsten has recently separated from her husband so is Harry's preoccupation with another family just a reaction to the separation or is it really evidence of reincarnation? Isabel agrees to look into it even though she's profoundly sceptical about reincarnation. Harry's memories of the house he lived in are very specific & Isabel decides that a possible location is near a lighthouse on the Ardnamurchan peninsula. What Isabel discovers when she visits the house seems to put Harry's memories down to chance but that isn't the end of the story.

It's taken me a while to get around to reading this latest instalment in the Isabel Dalhousie series. I seem to be reading fewer & fewer modern novels & I've stopped reading several authors for whose new books I was always first in the reservation queue. Although I borrowed this when it was published last year, I took it back unread. A couple of weeks ago, I suddenly decided the time was right & then sat down & read it in one sitting. I like Isabel, the Edinburgh setting, her musings about Scottish art (she visits Guy Peploe's gallery this time & looks at an exhibition of Colourists), the visits of Brother Fox &, this time, the visit to the west coast of Scotland. I'm afraid Isabel's endless worrying & musing drives me a little crazy & I can't help wondering that if she had less money & had more to do, she wouldn't have time to endlessly debate the ethics of her own & everyone else's motives. But then, she is a philosopher & that's what she's like - there, I'm dithering just as much as Isabel! I also find Jamie a bit of a cipher - handsome, kind, endlessly supportive, great cook - but Isabel seems a little less inclined to question their relationship in this book.

I was also interested in the reincarnation theme. I've always been fascinated by reincarnation. As well as reading lots of time-slip novels over the years, I've also read quite a few more serious books on the subject, including the ones by Ian Stevenson that Isabel mentions. It's one of those subjects, like the existence of ghosts, that can never really be proved one way or the other although there are certainly some very convincing stories about both phenomena. As a rational person with a leaning towards scientific explanations of the world, Isabel finds reincarnation hard to believe but she's open minded enough to do some research as she pursues her investigation. The Novel Habits of Happiness was an enjoyable way to spend a cool summer afternoon & with the enticing hook of a new plot development at the end of the novel, I'll look forward to the next book in the series.

Death without tenure - Joanne Dobson

I love an academic mystery. Amanda Cross, Michael Innes, Christine Poulson, Janet Neel & Joanne Dobson. It’s been a few years since the last Joanne Dobson novel & I was afraid she had stopped writing them but I was very pleased to discover Death without Tenure. Our detective is Karen Pelletier, English professor at an elite New England college. Karen has worked hard to get to her current position. A single mother at 19, abandoned by her family & her baby’s father, she worked hard, studying at night to get a degree & get a teaching job. Now, she’s been at Enfield College six years & she’s up for tenure. If she gets tenure, it will mean her job is secure for the rest of her career. She’s done the work, published books & articles, sat on committees, had glowing teaching assessments & is admired & respected by students & colleagues. The only downside to her life is that her boyfriend, Charlie Piotrowski, has been called up from his job as a homicide detective to serve with the National Guard in Iraq & he’ll be gone for at least a year.

Her rival for tenure is Joseph Lone Wolf, a man who has never been a part of the academic team at Enfield. Standoffish, aloof, he’s never sat on a committee or published anything. There are rumours he never finished the dissertation for his degree. But, he’s a Native American, & the head of department, Ned Hilton, doesn’t want to appear discriminatory towards a minority staff member so he’s leaning towards giving tenure to Joe. Karen is incensed by the unfairness of the whole process & has a very public argument with Lone Wolf over his behaviour towards Ayesha, one of their students. So, when Joe is found murdered, Karen becomes suspect no 1.

The detective investigating the case is boorish, abrupt & holds a grudge against Charlie so he’s all too ready to suspect his girlfriend of murder. However, Karen isn’t the only one with a motive for killing Lone Wolf. There’s the beautiful woman who bails him up in a bar just days before his murder & hits him so hard he falls down. There’s the student he threatened to fail who may then lose the scholarship he is relying on to stay at school. Then, when it turns out that Lone Wolf may not have been all he seemed, more suspects & motives are revealed. Karen gets involved in investigating the murder with the help of Charlie’s partner, Sergeant Felicity Schultz, currently on maternity leave. On top of all this, Karen’s daughter, Amanda, is travelling in Tibet & frequently uncontactable & her sister, Connie, suddenly appears with their frail mother & demands Karen take care of her while she goes on a management course.

Karen is a very likeable detective & I love the fact that she’s an English professor. Previous books in the series have focussed more on literature than this one does (although Karen quotes Emily Dickinson several times) & Karen’s researches into Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, a Grace Metalious-like popular author & American crime writers have featured in previous books in the series. Joanne Dobson’s books remind me of Amanda Cross’s terrific mystery series with feminist academic Kate Fansler. Death without Tenure is a satire on academic political correctness. It’s a wonderful picture of an institution trying to be so politically correct that true justice & common sense fly right out the window.