A delightful new setting-London-a delightful new cast of characters, and one incredibly clever dog. Corduroy Mansions is the affectionate nickname given to a genteel, crumbling mansion block in London's vibrant Pimlico neighborhood, and the home turf of a new cast of captivating, quirky, and altogether McCall-Smithian characters. There's the middle-aged wine merchant William, who's trying to convince his reluctant twenty-four-year-old son, Eddie, to leave the nest; and Marcia, the restaurant propriatrix who has her sights set on William. There's also the (justifiably) much-loathed member of Parliament, Oedipus Snark; his mother, Berthea, who's writing his biography and loathing every minute of him; and his long-suffering girlfriend, Barbara, a literary agent who would like to be his wife (but, then, she'd like to be almost anyone's wife). There's the vitamin evangelist, the psychoanalyst, the art student with a puzzling boyfriend, and the Pimlico terrier, Freddie de la Haye, who can fasten his own seat belt and is almost certainly the only avowed vegetarian canine in London. The comings and goings, the face-to-face and behind-the-back meetings and misses, the in and outs of neighborliness in all its unexpected variations-here is a new world for us to enter, filled with all the life, laughter, and humanity that we have come to expect from Alexander McCall Smith.