The Sunday Philosophy Club

Author: Alexander McCall Smith


I must disclaim: The whole Murder, She Wrote-esque mystery is not my genre of choice, and so this book had a strike against it before we even began our journey together. Plus, the cover of the book has plaid all over it. Red plaid. (The book is set in Edinburgh, Scotland, and I know the whole not judging a book by its cover thing, but oh, the garishness.) Why, then, you ask, did I even read a book whose prospects of entertaining me were so dismal and few? Because: My in-laws are in the process of moving, and over the last few months, my mother-in-law has been slowly seeding my personal library with her old book club books, because she doesn't want to take them with her but cannot quite bring herself to get rid of them all together. And I have been working my way through them, and this was the last of them. Plus, sometimes I find a book in a random, usually disliked genre that surprises me and strikes my fancy. Sadly, this particular book not only failed to rise above its genre, but it did not even manage to be a decent example of its genre.
The Sunday Philosophy Club introduces Isabel Dalhousie, an independently wealthy forty-something editor of a Philosophical Journal and an amateur mystery-solver/busybody. While attending a concert, Isabel witnesses a young man fall to his death from the balcony of the theatre, and the how and why and wherefore of his fall form the central plot of the story. Interspersed with this are two or three subplots: Isabel's niece, Cat, is dating a young man that Isabel doesn't like, and Isabel spends some of her time wringing her hands about Cat's errors in judgement, trying to find proof that the young man is up to nefarious deeds, and mooning over the young man that she wishes Cat would date instead. Isabel's former husband keeps cropping up in her reflections, making you think that he will turn up at some point and be relevant, which he does not and is not.
Here's the thing: This is not a long book, nor is it an especially challenging one. It is, I believe, meant to be kind of a lightweight, lighthearted read, filling the niche in one's reading experience that shows like Columbo fill in one's television experience. There is absolutely a place for this sort of thing. One in the morning, for instance, when you can't quite sleep and yet can't quite think coherently, either. Even a lighthearted romp of a book, though, has rules and obligations it should live by. The Sunday Philosophy Club manages to commit all of the following crimes against bookish nature in its 247 pages:
* I understand that this is the first book in a series of books about Isabel, and that part if not most of the author's goal is to simply introduce us to the characters and their circumstances. Not having read any of the other books in the series, I can't say whether things improve once the foundation is laid. I do feel very strongly, however, that books or movies that are part of a series should be able to stand alone, too, and this one just doesn't. Three quarters of the book are spent introducing characters that have no relationship with the main plot, and because the book is not long, this means that the central mystery gets cheated out of most of its, you know, mystique. This book may, as I said, be simply laying the groundwork for much better books to come, but I shouldn't have to read a bad book in order to make future good books make sense. I don't have that kind of time. Plus, what if the next books aren't better? I'm not sure I can take the chance. At heart, I am just not a gambler.
* While most of the story takes place from Isabel's perspective, the author occasionally and without warning tells us what other characters are thinking, or shows us what they are doing when Isabel is not present. This happens just often enough to be jarring, but not often enough that the other characters come into focus as co-protagonists. Plus, very little information comes to light in these forays that could not easily be omitted or discovered by Isabel, herself. The author seems a little uncertain about his voice and perspective in the story, and seems to have chosen to skate between third person limited and third person omniscient, confusing both perspectives and aggravating Chelsa in so doing.
* The conclusion of a good mystery, or any story with a twist ending, should illicit two thoughts, one right after the other: I did not see that coming at all! followed immediately by I totally should have seen that coming! You want an ending that ties everything up, that makes sense in terms of the characters and their interactions and their circumstances, but one that doesn't become too obvious too quickly. If the ending comes out of left field, you feel like you've been lied to (So out of all twenty-seven thousand people who hated The Victim, the murderer was actually Never Introduced Secret Option Twenty-Seven Thousand and One? I can't imagine why I didn't see that coming!) but if you figure it out too soon, then you spend the rest of the movie/book berating the main characters for their stupidity (For God's sake, Main Character, did it ever cross your mind that Lurky Black Trench Coat Wearer With Inexplicable Blood Stains On His Socks might be the killer, even though he said that he was an innocent librarian? You deserve to be killed!). It is a difficult thing to pull off, which explains why there are so many bad mysteries out there. I am not going to spoil the ending (if, in fact, my obvious distaste has not spoiled it already, and if, in fact, I even could spoil an ending that is already so severely lacking in finesse) of this particular mystery, but I will say (look away if you have decided to read the book, in spite of everything, and don't want any additional clues to spoil your enjoyment) that the author introduces many a semi-intriguing possible reason for the young man's death, and that the actual mystery is solved in a single half page at the very end and has nothing to do with any of the intriguing possibilities laid out. It is both anti-climactic and annoying, leaving one with the feeling that they have wasted precious time reading semi-intriguing possibilities that ultimately went nowhere.
* Isabel as a character is so tremendously derivative of Angela Lansbury's character on Murder, She Wrote (plucky, slightly nosy middle-aged gentlewoman who solves murder mysteries in her spare time) that I could only ever picture her as Angela Lansbury, making the sexier of Isabel's ruminations about her former husband and current acquaintances decidedly uncomfortable for me.
* Isabel is, as I think I mentioned, the editor of a journal that publishes articles on philosophical points of interest. Other than an occasional mention of articles that Isabel is perusing in between clue-gatherings, however, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the story. Isabel does not attend meetings of any sort of Philosophy Club, no Philosophy Club members are either murdered or murderers, and, as far as I can remember, nothing noteworthy happens on a Sunday. This means that the author has committed a crime that peeves me somethin' awful -- he has given his book a title that has little or nothing to do with the book itself, because it sounds sassier than a more relevant title. While I agree that A Plucky Forty-Something Angela-Lansbury-ish Woman Who Stumbles Across A Murder, Bothers A Bunch Of Sinister But Ultimately Innocent People, And Then Stumbles Upon The Actual Perpetrator Of The Crime Using Neither Skill Nor Wit Right Before The Story Abruptly Ends is a title that doesn't roll off the tongue, exactly, it would give a much more accurate picture of the book's contents.
So, to sum up: Would I recommend this book to a friend? No, I would not. I might recommend it to an enemy. You know, if I had an enemy who I disliked, but not quite enough to thwart in a more proactive way, and if that enemy, unaware of my dislike or mistakenly believing that my book recommendations would not be tainted by my dislike, asked me to recommend a book. It seems like an unlikely scenario to me, but unlikely scenarios crop up all the time, and I am glad that I now have a plan of attack set up for this one.