I wonder how much my enthusiasm for Alexander McCall Smith’s stories about Precious Ramotswe, the founder of The Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency, came from reading them while in a French hospital recovering from an emergency operation?  Grateful to be transported from my hospital bed to Botswana and find myself in her company I wouldn’t have heard a word against her. And when his first Edinburgh book came out called 44 Scotland Street, where years ago I once had digs, did I allow a nostalgic bias to creep in? But here’s Love Over Scotland, and I have no excuse for any bias, nostalgic or otherwise.

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