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Book Summary and Reviews of The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday by Alexander Mccall Smith

The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday by Alexander Mccall Smith

The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday

An Isabel Dalhousie Novel

by Alexander Mccall Smith

  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • Published:
  • Sep 2008, 256 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Isabel’s incandescent curiosity is piqued when she is asked to help a professor of medicine who has been disgraced by allegations of scientific fraud concerning a newly marketed drug. Would a doctor with a stellar reputation make such a simple but grave mistake? If not, what explains the tragic accident that resulted in the death of a patient?

An investigation is in order, especially since a man’s reputation is in jeopardy, and a great deal of money is at stake for the pharmaceutical company involved.

She’s also occupied by the envy she feels in the face of Jamie’s new friendship with the composer-in-residence at the University of Edinburgh. Whatever the case, whatever the solution, Isabel’s combination of spirit, smarts, curiosity, empathy and unabashed nosiness guarantees a delightful adventure.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"The strengths of the book, as with Smith's better known No. 1 Ladies' Detective series, lie in its protagonist's determination to treat others without judgment—and in the author's revealing glimpses into the human soul." - Publishers Weekly.

"Another insubstantial yet deeply rooted paean to Isabel's status as an "intermeddler" whose reasoning begins where other literary sleuths' ends." - Kirkus Reviews.

This information about The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Alexander Mccall Smith Author Biography

Alexander McCall Smith began the now highly successful 'No 1 Ladies Detective Agency' series in 1996, after being inspired by the sight of a 'traditionally built' Botswanan lady chasing down a chicken for a meal. The first book in the series - 'The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency' was published in the UK in 1998 but didn't arrive in the USA until 2001.

Known to his friends as Sandy, McCall Smith describes the Botswanans as 'genuinely courteous people' He knows Botswana well as he grew up there and also spent several years on the law faculty of the University of Botswana; his volume on the legal system of Botswana (The Criminal Law of Botswana) remains the definitive and in fact, only book on the subject.

In 2004 he published the first in a...

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