Bertie's Theory of Ice Cream by Andrew McCall Smith

 

Welcome once again to the gossamer world of Andrew McCall Smith. The 2025 addition to his 44 Scotland Series is titled Bertie’s Theory of Ice Cream, and all the familiar characters have new adventures that connect them to life’s notoriously crooked and uncertain paths. McCall Smith sets the tone when he has Bertie maintain that ice cream is better when shared. And so, since uncertainty is certain, it is best to get on with the eating of it before it melts.

 Irene Pollack, Bertie’s mother, has taken up with a Scottish fisherman and is now splitting her time between a small north-east coast village and Edinburgh. Bertie has remained in the city with his father Stuart, and Stuart’s mother Nicola. He continues to have problems at school with classmates Olive and Pansy, who have forced him to join their Jane Austen book club.  There is more hilarity when Angus discovers that Sister Maria-Fiore has hidden a piece of the famous Stone of Scone in the Scotland Street Garden. We also get updates on lightning-struck Bruce, who has recovered and is back to his old self-centered ways.  His latest real estate venture comes to a halt when his proposed modifications run afoul of listed building requirements. Another recurring theme is the inner psychological makeup of dogs.  At one point, we learn that Angus’s dog Cyril is really just a “sophisticated sausage.” You will also meet,  Ralph, a “vegan dog” who has deserted Mathew and Elsbeth’s new neighbors for the more meat-loving household of Mathew and Elsbeth’s. They seem to have an endless supply of sausages.  

We could go on with plot details, but I must admit that the adventures of Bertie and his sidekick Ranald are more delightful than the more erudite adult characters like Angus, Domenica, Mathew, and Elsbeth. No matter. As we near the end, when things grow more reflective, all the participants gather to share a meal that concludes with Angus’ poem about love and human community.

“To the land I love so much it hurts,” he says. There is always Scotland.

                                   

I love these books and the characters that McCall Smith populates them with.  I give it a 4.75 out of five.

Suspect by Scott Turow

 

This “legal thriller” from 2022 by established author Scott Turow supplies courtroom, bedroom, and investigative action in roughly equal doses. It is told from the viewpoint of Clarice “Pinky” Granum, who is an investigator for a lawyer named Rik Dudek. Dudek has been hired to defend Lucia Gomez a high flying long-time successful police chief who has been accused of soliciting sex in exchange for promotions.

Pinky has had a checkered career and is now a tattooed bisexual who is still looking to find the right lover and the right fit into today’s society. When a mysterious man, who has just moved into her apartment building, attracts her, she finds her work for lawyer Rik now merging with her obsession. The guy, who has now become her lover, turns out to be a security expert in the employ of the Ritz--a former cop and old enemy of the Chief.

The Ritz is the head of an extensive criminal network that runs to real estate fraud, sex, and drug peddling in the city. The police chief’s trial is barely underway when one of the trial witnesses is murdered, possibly by the Ritz. Pinky and her guy are now center stage and each positioned to either help solve the case or crash and burn.      

Most of the characters in this book, even the supposed good people, are just too sleazy for me.  I simply could not like Pinky or the Chief. Rik Dudek, the lawyer, never rises to the fore and the arch villain, the Ritz, was so shadowy that he never came alive in my mind either. 

Definitely not Turow’s best work.

I give it a 2.5   

Stoppard Gets a Theatre

 A friend in London has just informed me, coming on the heels of the renaming of the Shaftsbury Theatre  the Judy Dench, that the Duke of York's Theatre has just been renamed The Top Stoppard. The naming will be celebrated by the limited run of Stoppard's marvelous play ARCADIA.

This blog has featured a quote from ARCADIA as its namesake since it was started many years ago. This honor is well deserved. 

Strangers in Time by David Baldacci

 

As most avid readers know, David Baldacci is one of America’s most prolific writers. He has been translated into over eighty languages and has sold over 150 million copies of his books worldwide. And I must confess that I do not remember reading a single one of them until now. The jacket, featuring a recognizable image of London, pulled me in, and the plot did keep me turning the pages even though it depended on the rather improbable intersection of the three main characters--all from radically different layers of British society--during the Blitz.   

A young girl of means, Molly Wakefield, who has been shipped out of the city to avoid the bombing, returns to the family home in posh Chelsea at the age of fifteen. Her mother is in a mental institution in Cornwall and her father has disappeared. She connects with Ignacious Oliver, a mysterious bookstore proprietor in Covent Garden, and a fourteen-year-old street urchin, Charlie Matters, who has lost his family and is now living rough.  All three bond as the destruction goes from bad to worse. Molly’s Chelsea home is leveled by bombs; Charlie is running from the law because of possible involvement in the death of a policeman; and Ignacious, while mourning the death of his wife, has a strange visitor who comes and goes at all hours. The trio all end up living in Oliver’s bookstore as the German attacks increase in ferocity.    

Every time you think WWII has been picked clean of plots, an author returns to the well with a new twist. Baldacci manages this with practiced ease. The mystery of Oliver's visitor ultimately merges with Molly's father's disappearance, and the ending produces more sadness and violence. I still find the coincidences that throw these three characters together a bit much, but the history remains compelling.

In sum, Strangers in Time is a workmanlike thriller that holds you right up to the last pages.  It is not  great literature, but it sure is vintage Baldacci.   

I give it 3.5 out of 5