Beth Bonini's Reviews > The Careful Use of Compliments

It would have been interesting to see Isabel Dalhousie during pregnancy, but the author chose to make a rather big jump between books: so the third Dalhousie (The Right Attitude to Rain) ends with Isabel telling Jamie that she is pregnant, and this next one opens with Isabel having a 3 month old baby named Charlie. Perhaps the author felt uncomfortable getting into the nitty-gritty of pregnancy and the grimier aspects of early motherhood, but the storyline glides over all of this very smoothly. That kind of reality is not part of the Isabel Dalhousie fictional world; I could accept that, but I can also see that it might annoy other readers. As with the previous books, the emphasis is all on Isabel's philosophical musings and the mystery she involves herself in. Jamie (her younger boyfriend), Cat (her difficult niece) and Grace (her housekeeper) round out the cast of characters, although there are also some Edinburgh bit players. The "mystery" in this book revolves around a painting and a Scottish painter called Andrew McInnes. When a painting of the (deceased) McInnes comes up on the market, Isabel bids for it -- but then loses it to another bidder because she feels some discomfort about the sum of money involved. Isabel's wealth is an issue is this novel, and it takes various forms: not only does she reveal her wealth to Jamie for the first time, but she uses her wealth to gain control of the Ethics Journal when Professors Dove and Lettuce make a play for it. The idea of authenticity and identity plays out in various ways. At first, Isabel decides that the painting is a fake -- and believes that she has the evidence to prove it -- but then the mystery of McInnes takes on an entirely unexpected dimension. A good ending; I particularly liked the way the McInnes mystery played out, with its various connections to the idea of paternity . . . including the fact that Isabel's original McInnes was a legacy from her own father.