The Perfect Passion Company is an introduction agency in Edinburgh, Scotland, owned and operated by Inverness Macpherson who wants to take a year off. She asks Katie, a close relative, to manage the business while she’s away in Canada.
Katie, attractive and in her 30s, is pleased to leave London. We learn she has experienced not one, but two unhappy love affairs in the nation’s capital.
Michael, handsome and in his mid-20s, used to help Inverness and is soon involved in helping Katie. The Perfect Passion Company follows Katie and Michael as they find partners for an airline pilot who wants a woman to take care of him; a hotelier with an overbearing mother; and a woman who talks too much.
Now and again, we leave the search for suitable partners for lovelorn clients to visit Canada to see how Inverness is faring. She has chosen to go north and spend time in a small rural community where newcomers are a rarity. We realise before she does that two of the unmarried older men are keen to have a relationship ‘closer than friendship’. Being in her mid-50s with three husbands in her past, she’s not wanting a fourth. She needs a strategy to let them know without losing their friendship.
Alexander McCall Smith’s latest novel is well written, has short chapters, apparent complications that look insurmountable, and wonderful solutions that are a joy to read.
Reviewed by Clive Hodges
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexander McCall Smith, often referred to as ‘Sandy’, is one of the world’s most prolific and best-loved authors. For many years he was a professor of Medical Law and worked in universities in the UK and abroad before turning his hand to writing fiction. He has written and contributed to more than 100 books including specialist academic titles, short story collections, and a number of immensely popular children’s books. His first book, The White Hippo – a children’s book, was published in 1980.
But it wasn’t until the publication of the highly successful ‘The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency’ series that Alexander became a household name. The series has now sold over 20 million copies in the English language alone, and since the books took off, he has devoted his time to writing.
He has also authored many non-fiction titles, the latest of which are A Work of Beauty: Alexander McCall Smith’s Edinburghand What W.H. Auden Can Do For You.
Recently Alexander has written a new children’s series – The School Ship Tobermory – and we now have four books in the series. This increases the number of children’s books he has written to more than thirty.
Alexander has received numerous awards for his writing and holds twelve honorary doctorates from universities in Europe and North America. In 2007 he received a CBE for services to literature and in 2011 was honoured by the President of Botswana for services through literature to the country. In 2015 he received the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction and in 2017, The National Arts Club (of America) Medal of Honor for Achievement in Literature. In 2020, he received the honorary fellowship of the FT Weekend Oxford Literary Festival. And in 2022 he received the Lifetime Achievement in the Saltire Literary Awards.
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