Book review: The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday by Alexander McCall Smith

The twenty-fourth book I read in 2016 was the fifth of Alexander McCall Smith's Isabel Dalhousie novels, The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday.  Since I read book four, which I panned, I ran across a review of one of the books that suggested that McCall Smith intended for Isabel to come across as a modern Emma Woodhouse.  It's certainly a reasonable suggestion, since he has, in fact, written a modern Emma, which is on my to-read list, and while I'm not convinced it's an altogether successful gambit (largely because Isabel is older and should Know Better, while the original Emma has her youth and inexperience to excuse her unbearable tendencies), keeping it in the back of my mind did allow me to read this book without hating the protagonist as much as I have in previous forays.

In this installment, Isabel is enlisted to look into the mystery of a doctor whose career ended when he was accused of covering up inconvenient data in a drug trial.  If I say it amounts to as much as the mystery of Harriet Smith's parentage, you'll understand me.  She is also jealous of a new friend of Jamie's, loans Eddie money under false pretenses (or are they?  Really, who knows or cares?), and carries on an internal debate whether or not to be small and petty to the man she forced off the board of the magazine she bought last book.  All understandable acts of a spoiled teenager but less charming coming from a forty-year-old.