Often when I go into a library my mind goes completely blank and I find myself scanning the shelves hoping that something pops up or my brain gets into gear. It doesn’t help when the place has just been completely re-organised as well, but I did think to myself – Alexander McCall Smith – it’s about time he had a new Scotland Street book out. Sure enough, there was one sitting on a shelf.

Previously I’ve enjoyed this series, as much for the Edinburgh setting as anything else really but I think it is going downhill. It’s the usual cast of characters really, although Angus Lordie and his new wife Domenica don’t play much of a role as they take off for their honeymoon. Cyril the dog is the best part of the book, so there must be something going wrong with the series.

For some reason Bertie is still 6 years old, and it’s mentioned quite a few times, he’s still wearing his crushed strawberry dungarees, much to his shame, in fact he seems to be unchanged, very strange considering how quickly children do change. His mother, Irene continues to be a pain in the neck, only relieved by another child’s mother getting the better of her. Bruce Anderson, another pain, hasn’t got his come-uppance, surely it must happen sometime, Matthew will certainly be hoping so!

The author rambles off at times, often the best bits of the book as he comments on Thatcher and how awful she was and various ethical and religious musings, he gets a few things off his chest, like government statistics and the fact that not all Scots speak with a broad accent, but it doesn’t mean they are English. The trouble is that so many wealthy Scots still send their sons to Eton, a tradition which started when Scottish clan chiefs decided it would be a good idea to Anglicise their sons after the union. It is difficult to see people as Scots when they have an upper class English accent. Having said that, my own sons have been accused of being English, just because they don’t have a Fife accent.

In the past I’ve enjoyed when McCall Smith shoehorns real Edinburgh characters into his books, but I did think OOPS! when Cardinal Keith O’Brien (he was the head of RCs in Britain) suddenly appeared briefly in the story, described as a very nice man. Obviously it was written pre his massive fall from grace. It is thought that Pope Benedict resigned after he discovered that O’Brien had had a long career of abusing young priests, who were completely under his control. So maybe it’s best to stick with fictional characters.

I don’t know if I’ll bother reading the next book in this series, when it comes out. I didn’t hate this one, but it definitely misses the west of Scotland characters and humour, in the shape of the Glaswegian hard man Lard O’Connor, it was a mistake to kill him off. Of course it could be that I am just not in the mood for a Scotland Street book at the moment, and I am just being a grumpy old curmudgeon.