Isabel Dalhousie is the heroine of a new series of mystery stories by Alexander McCall Smith, author of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books featuring Mma. Ramotswe and her detective agency in Botswana. The Sunday Philosophy Club is set in Edinburgh, Scotland, McCall Smith’s home.

In this first book of the series, we find out several interesting facts about our protagonist/amateur detective. Isabel Dalhousie is a middle-aged single woman with a failed marriage and a lost love in her distant past. She is independently wealthy, or at least comfortably well-off, and she collects art. She plays the flute and is the part-time editor of an academic journal, The Review of Applied Ethics. Her job and her own personal tendencies lead Isabel to do a lot of philosophical speculation during the course of the story, and her musings tend to be both commonsensical and fascinating. Isabel’s housekeeper, Gracie, is a quick and excellent judge of character, and her niece, Cat, is goodhearted, but rather lacking in discernment, especially when it comes to men. Isabel is a member (maybe the initiator) of The Sunday Philosophy Club, a club that is “not exactly very active.” In fact, despite the title of the book, The Sunday Philosophy Club never mets over the course of the story, and I still don’t even know who the members are.

Notwithstanding the low profile club, Isabel Dalhousie is a philosopher, and the novel is an exercise in applied ethics. Isabel witnesses an accidental death (that, of course, may be murder) at the beginning of the story, and she must decide whether or not to become involved in investigating the circumstances surrounding the death. Later in the story, she must decide how much truth to tell and when a lie is permissible. She must deal with the limits of forgiveness and the demands of justice. However, that description of this mystery, although true, sounds much too heavy. The Sunday Philosophy Club is, first of all, a gentle and entertaining story about people and relationships and, yes, applied ethics.

If you like cozy mysteries or Scotland or if you liked Alexander McCall Smith’s previous books, you should enjoy this one. If you lean more toward thrillers and hard-boiled detectives, The Sunday Philosophy Club probably won’t be your cup of tea. (It does include a whiskey nosing, first one I’ve ever been to or read about.)

The next book in the series, Friends, Lovers, Chocolate, has a great title, which may again have very little to do with the book itself, but I’m ready to read it based on my enjoyment of The Sunday Philosophy Club and the chocolate in the title. A book with chocolate in the title must be worth something.