Paperback: In Espresso Tales (2005), Alexander McCall Smith pays another entertaining visit to Edinburgh and the lively residents of 44 Scotland Street. With its multiple-occupancy flats, Scotland Street is an interesting corner of the city, verging on the Bohemian, where haute bourgeoisie rub shoulders with students and the more colourful members of the intelligentsia.
Bruce is planning a new career as a wine merchant, while his long-suffering flatmate Pat, set up by matchmaking Domenica Macdonald, finds herself at a nudist picnic in Moray Place.
And young Bertie Pollock, who longs for a boy's life of fishing and rubgy, not the yoga and pink dungarees foisted upon him by his bossy mother Irene, is plotting rebellion.
However, when he lands himself in a sticky situation involving a card game and legendary Glasgow hard-man Lard O'Connor, he realises he must be careful what he wishes for.
Espresso Tales - the second book in the 44 Scotland Street series - is vintage McCall Smith, tackling issues of trust and honesty, snobbery and hypocrisy, love and loss, but all with great lightness of touch. Clever, elegant and funny, this is a novel that provides huge entertainment but which is underpinned by the moral dilemmas of everyday life and the characters' struggles to resolve them.
About the author: Alexander McCall Smith is one of the world’s most prolific and most popular authors. His career has been a varied one: for many years he was a professor of Medical Law and worked in universities in the United Kingdom and abroad. Then, after the publication of his highly successful No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, which has sold over twenty million copies, he devoted his time to the writing of fiction and has seen his various series of books translated into over forty languages and become bestsellers through the world.
The series include the Scotland Street novels, first published as a serial novel in The Scotsman, the Sunday Philosophy Club series starring Isabel Dalhousie, the von Igelfeld series, and the new Corduroy Mansions novels.
Alexander is also the author of collections of short stories, academic works, and over thirty books for children. He has received numerous awards for his writing, including the British Book Awards Author of the Year Award in 2004 and a CBE for service to literature in 2007. He holds honorary doctorates from nine universities in Europe and North America. Alexander McCall Smith lives in Edinburgh. He is married to a doctor and has two daughters.
Rating: 5/5
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