Matters of the head and heart

ALEXANDER McCall Smith is brewing books so fast and furiously -- a sort of Starbucks of the literary world -- that there’s a real danger of market saturation. His current total exceeds 50 volumes. Since 2002, the Edinburgh University professor of medical law has produced six (of a planned eight) in his Botswana-based “No. 1 Ladies Detective” series. He also cranks out a daily serial novel, “44 Scotland Street,” for his hometown newspaper, the Scotsman.

Then there’s “The Sunday Philosophy Club” series, which made a splash with its charming debut last year, followed now by the enticingly titled but weaker second installment, “Friends, Lovers, Chocolate.”

McCall Smith’s gift is his ability to whip quality ingredients into his froth, serving up entertaining mysteries enriched by simplified, easily quaffed ethical issues, enchanting background locations and enough references to W.H. Auden to make even literary snobs feel OK about indulging in light commercial fiction.

Like Precious Ramotswe of the “No. 1 Ladies Detective,” Isabel Dalhousie, the heroine of this new series, is a strong, engaging character. She is a divorced, independently wealthy Edinburgh-based moral philosopher with an overactive sense of ethical obligation and a penchant for sticking her nose into others’ business. Not a meddler, she tells us, but an “intromitter” -- an old Scots law term for “somebody who gets involved.”

It is unfortunate that the prolific professor is turning out concoctions of uneven quality. The eponymous first installment of “The Sunday Philosophy Club” was an irresistible, tightly structured mystery that began with a bang -- a man overboard from the upper circle at the concert hall. Was he pushed? Did he jump? Isabel simply had to find out -- and so did we.

“Friends, Lovers, Chocolate” is a meandering, less focused work that reads as if it could have used another draft.

While helping out in her niece’s upscale delicatessen, Isabel meets Ian, a psychologist who recently had a heart transplant and is haunted by memories of events he never experienced. He concludes they must be his donor’s memories. The central issue is whether the human heart is the seat of the soul or just a mechanical pump. Is there such a thing as cellular memory? Isabel’s attempts to sort out Ian’s visions take her down several wrong alleys before she comes to her rational resolution.

Along the way are digressions about her opinionated housekeeper Grace, her niece Cat (whom Isabel feels dates the wrong men) and Cat’s former boyfriend Jamie, a bassoonist who still carries a torch for Cat. Isabel, meanwhile, grapples with what she considers to be inappropriate feelings for Jamie, in light of the 15 years’ difference between their ages. The “intimate” city of Edinburgh is an appealing character in its own right.

As in the first book, Isabel, editor of the Review of Applied Ethics, can’t turn off her moral meter. She is emphatically not a relativist. “She felt uncomfortable with moral relativists and their penchant for nonjudgementalism. But of course we must be judgemental, she said, when there is something to be judged.”

The issues that concern her range from the intriguing to the daft. “Can you do an injustice to someone who hasn’t been with us for over 400 years?” she asks at one point. At another, she considers a proposed paper on the ethics of the buffet table: Is it wrong to pocket an extra roll to eat later?

Isabel has such immutable and often fusty views that she seems far older than her early 40s.

She primly objects to people who don’t include last names in introductions; believes that to be equal partners in a relationship, both people must be the same age; disapproves of promiscuity, “an emotional fast food, really.” Many of her positions are, of course, debatable, including her insistence that “[o]ne of the consequences of being a philosopher is that you get involved.” She obviously isn’t thinking of the analytic philosophers who keep actual life at a distant intellectual remove.

An issue McCall Smith does not consider is the morality of false advertising -- to wit, his alluring title, which has precious little to do with his story. Reader, be warned: Chocolate comes up exactly twice. These quibbles notwithstanding, there’s some delicious mental comfort food in this series. But let’s hope McCall Smith roasts a richer brew next volume.

Heller McAlpin is a regular contributor to Book Review.