Another wonderful story concerning Professor Dr Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld by Alexander McCall Smith.
I’m not reading these books in the correct order, but it doesn’t matter too much as they stand on their own more or less. Talking of standing, Professor Unterholzer’s sausage dog is mentioned in this book and is the reason Unterholzer might be prosecuted for operating a vehicle on a pavement.
The main antagonist at the beginning of the book is Dr Hilda Schreiber-Ziegler, the new Deputy Librarian at the Institute of Romance Philology in Regensburg. She takes exception to being barred from the Senior Coffee Room and complains to The Rector of the university, who decides the Institute should have a Director. Two people put their names forward and there’s an election.
Before the election, Von Igelfeld goes on a visiting fellowship to Oxford for three weeks and meets two antagonists, a visiting academic from the USA called Dr Schneeweiss and an MI6 agent called B.
Dr Scheeweiss returns to Regensburg as she is a big fan of Von Igelfeld and his masterwork Portuguese Irregular Verbs.
Somehow, everyone manages to come out of the story a winner including Dr Schreiber-Ziegler and Dr Scheeweiss. Von Igelfeld also has to admit to himself that in two instances he’s been a little greedy in terms of self promotion and decides to revert back to how things were when the book started.
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