A Conspiracy of Friends

Starred review from April 23, 2012
Short on plot but teeming with charm, this confection takes its cue from Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City. For the third time, Smith (The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency) visits the self-contained fictional world encompassing the residents of Corduroy Mansions in London’s Pimlico neighborhood. The book opens by introducing an immense ensemble cast, which includes Oedipus Snark, “the only truly nasty Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament”; his mother, Berthea, at work on a “hostile biography” of her son; Berthea’s brother, a New Ager called Terence Moongrove; literary agent (and Snark’s former lover) Barbara Ragg; her odious business partner, Rupert Porter; as well as the hapless, affable wine merchant William French and his dog, Freddie de la Hay. Each has his or her own tale: a conflict at work, a longing for love, the search for new smells (that would be Freddie). There are as many plots in this genial, satisfying narrative as there are characters, and it’s a testament to Smith’s gifts as a storyteller that he’s able to bind the whole together with such a slender narrative thread. His ample humor and grace helps. Agent: Robin Straus.

May 1, 2012
The third installment in a series concerning the denizens of London's Corduroy Mansions. Member of Parliament Oedipus Snark has been appointed Undersecretary of This and That, but his psychotherapist mother Berthea still doesn't like him. Nor does his ex-lover Barbara Ragg, whose knowledge of his unsavory past gives her an unexpected opportunity for revenge. It's likely to provide cold comfort from a rift that looms with her fiance, Hugh, after the confessions they feel impelled to make to each other, or the revenge of his own that Rupert Porter, Barbara's partner in the literary agency their fathers founded, plots after Barbara decides not to sell him the flat her father left her after all. Wine merchant William French's son Eddie, financed by his heiress girlfriend, Merle, hires Cosmo Bartonette, the sharpest design eye in London, to decorate a space he wants to turn into a Hemingway-themed restaurant, and in the process he learns a bit about both Cosmo and himself. William's own quiet life is complicated by an avowal of love as unexpected as it is unwelcome and by the disappearance of his beloved Pimlico Terrier Freddie de la Hay, late of MI6 (The Dog Who Came in from the Cold, 2011, etc.). Caroline Jarvis, William's downstairs neighbor, wonders whether life will offer her any deeper relationships than the one she enjoys with her best, best friend James. And Berthea's brother, Terence Moongrove, moves up from his new Porsche to become part owner of a racecar he intends to drive himself. This third volume of Chekhovian soap opera is every bit as addictive as the first two. Fans will be sad to see any of the plots tied up, even by happy endings, and hope for more complications next season.

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Starred review from May 15, 2012
McCall Smith, who sets his Scotland Street and Corduroy Mansions series in upscale tenement buildings, produces vivid portraits of his characters much in the same way that early twentieth-century photographer Jacob Riis did with his images of squalid, early-twentieth-century tenement life: by throwing open the doors of apartments and capturing the life within in one quick flash. McCall Smith also shows how living in close proximity to others takes people out of their own narrow rounds, sometimes into true community (or conspiracy ). In the third Corduroy Mansions novel (which, like the first two, originally appeared in daily installments in the London Telegraph), we're reintroduced to such indelible Londoners as Berthea Snark, a psychiatrist with a well-founded loathing for her MP son, Oedipus; Barbara Ragg, a literary agent who escaped the snares of Oedipus and is now happily in love with a Scotsman; and William French, a wine merchant who failed his master of wine degree because of intoxication. The two moral poles of the novel are Oedipus, known as the only nasty Liberal Democrat in Parliament, who is satisfied but sociopathic, and French, resoundingly good but feeling directionless and dissatisfied. And then there is French's brilliant terrier, Freddie de la Hay, who throws everything into confusion by disappearing. McCall Smith is by turns hilarious at capturing foibles and meditative about the huge role chance and the plots of others play in our lives. Fascinating fare. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: How can a writer as prolific as McCall Smith continue to be so popular? Ask his millions of fans, who will be waiting in line for this one.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)