A Conspiracy of Friends

This is happily the third installment in Alexander McCall Smith's charming online serial novel, Corduroy Mansions, that is published around September each year in the Telegraph.  McCall Smith already had a very successful serial going in The Scotsman which centred around a handful of Edinburgh inhabitants and he has replicated the formula and set it in Pimlico, London - where, happily, anyone with Internet access can enjoy his daily chapters online.

I must admit that I was not as in love with the inhabitants of Corduroy Mansions as I was with those of 44 Scotland Street but that changed after reading the second book, The Dog Who Came in from the Cold.  The more time you spend in their company, the more invested you become and I look forward to following their everyday - and in some cases extraordinary - lives as I would with old friends.

A Conspiracy of Friends reintroduces us to the Corduroy Mansions inhabitants and the people in their world: William French, Master of Wine (Failed) and his (formerly vegetarian and MI-6 agent) Pimlico terrier Freddie de la Hay; the only unpleasant Lib-Dem, Oedipus Snark; Barbara Ragg (of the Ragg Porter Publishing Agency - publishers of the Yeti's Biography); Berthea Snark (psychotherapist and reluctant mother of Oedipus) and her New-Age, Porsche-driving brother Terence Moongrove...  to mention a few.

This book is filled with McCall Smith's light and sympathetic touch with dashes of humour and human observation.  I found it engaging and fun, especially since a large dose of interesting new situations are foisted upon our group of friends.  Perfect pick-me-up or calm-me-down reading.

Thank you to Birlinn/Polygon for kindly providing a review copy.

Return to Corduroy Mansions - Next Week!

Yes, it's that time of year again when Alexander McCall Smith turns his attention to his perennially popular online novel, Corduroy Mansions.  The third instalment - A Conspiracy of Friends - commences on Monday, 13 September 2010 and runs until December 2010.

I hope to read the second instalment in book form soon and I'm tempted to rush into the third online.  It's quite cheering to visit the Telegraph page each morning to enjoy Iain McIntosh's comical drawings first thing... and then taking in the hilarity of the chapter headings before you even begin to read the chapter.

I'm used to following these novels in Autumn and Winter in the UK - a cosy antidote to the darkening days - but this time I will be following its initial progress in a very hot South Africa.  It'll feel strange but it should allay some of my homesickness.

You can follow the daily chapters online here or opt to receive daily podcasts of the audio version - read by Andrew Sachs - further down on the same page. 

I only hope that he'll find time to continue with the lovely Scotland Street series in the Scotsman this year, so that I'll be able to read it next year when it is published in book form.  Fingers crossed!