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Readers who fell in love with Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, now have new cause for celebration in the protagonist of these three light-footed comic novels by Alexander McCall Smith. Welcome to the insane and rarified world of Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld of the Institute of Romance Philology. Von Igelfeld is engaged in a never-ending quest to win the respect he feels certain he is due–a quest which has the tendency to go hilariously astray.

In The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, Professor Dr. Von Igelfeld is mistaken for a veterinarian and not wanting to call attention to the faux pas, begins practicing veterinary medicine without a license. He ends up operating on a friend’s dachshund to dramatic and unfortunate effect. He also transports relics for a schismatically challenged Coptic prelate, and is pursued by marriage-minded widows on board a Mediterranean cruise ship.
Customer Review: You'll enjoy yourself with this one
von Igelfeld has got to be one of the most pompous and endearing characters that I have ever read. He has to give a lecture on a subject he knows nothing about and then he goes on a mission for a member of the Coptic Church. All of the stories are equally hilarious but the part about the sausage dogs (when it finally appears) is as horrifying as it is funny. Overall-Don't let my bland review turn you off to the book it really is very good.
Customer Review: Another charming collection of stories
The unlikely adventures of Professor Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld continue in this collection of five stories by Alexander McCall Smith. The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs finds our hero--the renowned author of that philological masterwork Portuguese Irregular Verbs--lecturing on the subject of veterinary medicine at the University of Arkansas ("The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs"), evading man-hungry widows on board a cruise ship ("The Perfect Imperfect"), and hobnobbing with Vatican bigwigs while vacationing in Italy ("The Bones of Father Christmas"). His relationship with his nemesis, Dr Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer (the author of a study on the Portuguese imperfect subjunctive, which is not, however, as fine a piece of scholarship as Igelfeld's own monograph), deepens in the course of these stories, despite Igelfeld's unwonted involvement with sausage dogs and as a direct result of the aforementioned widows. The situations into which von Igelfeld stumbles in his life can be inherently amusing: McCall Smith's account of Igelfeld's initial encounter with the Pope in the Vatican Library and the fallout from that meeting are well worth the read. But what makes the series so successful is the character of von Igelfeld. He is both oblivious to the perceptions of those around him and imperturbably convinced of his own self worth. His ego and his personal and academic jealousies inform his actions to a great degree. But at the same time there is a redeeming decency to Igelfeld, a sentimentality, that makes him likeable despite his many character flaws. McCall Smith's von Igelfeld series makes for a good, quietly comic read. Academics in particular will enjoy the author's wry mockery of their world--in which, as Kissinger's famous quip has it, the battles are vicious and the stakes so very small. Debra Hamel -- author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in ancient Greece (Yale University Press, 2003)


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