The ever-arrogant Bruce Anderson overestimates his skill at cryptic crosswords, and is offered a role in a morally questionable real estate scheme by a former schoolmate. Every book in the series offers an escape from reality, each character is well developed and it’s always like catching up with old friends when you read what antics they’ve been up to. The latest entry in AMS’s 44 Scotland Street series finds Irene raising her ugly head and wanting Bertie to spend 3 months with her in Aberdeen where she is pursuing her PhD in psychology.

I look forward to finding out how each character will grow and change in every book, and in this new installment a lot of my favourite people have exciting news and adventures. Nobody, apparently, wanted brown furniture any longer, as it was considered too cumbersome, not to say too dull, for contemporary tastes. Angus Lordie is a traditional portrait artist with an animus against The Turner Prize, which awards conceptual art - such as a video of a chair seen from different angles - rather than art objects. I'm happy with the threads that seem to be a little more tied off, but there are plenty of loose ends to keep going. things may get bad and then we say to ourselves remember your view and then everything looks better.

Warm hearted, humorous and wonderfully wise, Love in the Time of Bertie offers philosophical insight as well as sartorial elegance. However, I quickly remembered that these are gentle reads and that there would be a positive outcome! He is dismayed that he will be absent from his friends, schoolmates, loving grandmother, and weak-willed father, whom he adores.

Upstairs, at 44 Scotland Street, his father Stuart is powerless to stop over-bearing Irene and her determination that Bertie will travel to deepest, coldest Aberdeen on a three-month sojourn. The English shoes of which he was proudest were a pair of black brogues, made of soft and supple leather, and bought by his father from the London firm of John Lobb. Many of the characters live in apartments at 44 Scotland Street - and others are their neighbors, friends and acquaintances.Miserable he keeps a journal of his woes and then he and Ranald begin a great adventure that while probably not realistic was quite cute. Bruce, a strikingly handsome surveyor, is a narcissist who thinks all women should want to date him. Wishing that his sibling might go instead, Bertie remarks, not for the first time, on the resemblance of his baby brother Ulysses to the psychotherapist Irene forced him to see, Dr Fairbairn.