THE CHARMING QUIRKS OF OTHERS

This surprisingly thin and windy story featuring the philosopher Isabel Dalhousie is wonderfully well served by the completely charming performance of Davina Porter. Otherwise, the title seems unrelated to the story. Isabel is asked to discover an anonymously reported skeleton in the closet of one of three candidates for a job. One candidate turns out to be her niece’s new boyfriend, quite a coincidence even if Scotland is a small country. Another withdraws from the search, and the third may have fudged his academic credentials, but Isabel never gets around to investigating that. I’m not sure what Smith was thinking with this one, apart from giving Porter a chance to prove she could make an ethics textbook delightful. If that was his plan, it’s a triumph. B.G. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2010]