The eighth delightful installment in the ongoing saga of the life and loves
of Isabel Dalhousie. As the editor of an applied ethics journal, Isabel
Dalhousie is usually tucked away in her editorial office, in the
comfortable Edinburgh house she shares with her fiance and their young son,
and does not often meet many fellow philosophers. But while helping in the
delicatessen owned by her niece, Cat, she meets Jane Cooper, an Australian
philosopher who is spending a sabbatical in Scotland. Isabel learns that
Jane needs to find out something about her past. Jane was born in Scotland
but taken to Australia as a baby by her adoptive parents. She knows who her
mother is, but her father's identity is still a mystery. Can Isabel help
Jane unconver this important and potentially unsettling information? And in
Isabel's own life, there is the ever-present question of marriage, and also
the perennially difficult issue of her relationship with Cat, whose choice
of men is as dubious as ever.