Alexander McCall Smith, Friends, Lovers, Chocolate

I read the first Isabel Dalhousie novel (The Sunday Philosophy Club) just a few months ago and said then that I wasn't sure I'd read more in the series. But here this one was, already on my shelves; I couldn't say no. I find myself growing fonder of Isabel and more interested in her increasingly complex relationship with Jamie, her niece Cat's ex-boyfriend. In this installment, Isabel looks into the strange experiences described to her by a man she meets by chance in Cat's delicatessen. Sure, she's meddling in other people's affairs again, but she feels she has a moral duty to do so sometimes, and she seems to leave people better off than she found them. Philosophical musings abound, of course, and there is more talk of poets and more conversations with Isabel's housekeeper Grace, who is something like the Mma Makutsi of this world. An increasingly charming series: I'll doubtless be reading more.