Right Attitude To Rain: An Isabel Dalhousie Mystery

The key to contentment in the Scottish climate is the right attitude to rain - just as in life the key to happiness lies in making the best of what you have. But in her plain-speaking housekeeper Grace's opinion, Isabel Dalhousie - wealthy, attractive, kind and lonely - does not make the best of what she has; in Isabel's life there is too much thought and not enough action.
Bruised early in love by her faithless Irish husband, Isabel Dalhousie is a connoisseur of intimate moral issues; she edits a philosophical journal and spends a great deal of her time considering how to improve the lives of those around her. There is Grace, whose future she must secure; Isabel's niece Cat, embarking on a new relationship with a dubious workaholic mummy's boy; and even an American couple newly arrived in Edinburgh on a tour - gentle, cultured millionaire Tom, and Angie, his young, pretty troublemaker of a fiancee. And then there is Jamie, Cat's ex-boyfriend, a handsome, gifted musician fourteen years Isabel's junior, with whom she is slowly and hopelessly falling in love. More

Alexander McCall Smith was Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh.